I got some few e-mail asking about what is the best car insurance available in Malaysia?Of course the best means a lot of things.It is whether in terms of how fast u get the claim, how much they insurance cover most of it the flexibility of the insurance policy.If there is a lot of choices which claim to be the best, can we change our auto insurance for a new one?Is that practical or not?
This is what Chips aka moderator of mototrader forum has to say.Indeed it was something useful to share with here in carinsuranceviews.com .
Insurance companies normally pay out when the police close the case and declare that the car cannot be found. This can take 3 to 6 months. I heard that there are some insurance companies that also conduct their own searches, maybe because it is cheaper to recover the car for you than to pay you compensation.
Once they inform the insurance company that the car can’t be found, then it will begin processing the claim. This is where the problem often starts because of the valuation. Many times, motorists are dismayed to find that the insured value they paid the premium for is not what they get. The insurance company will have its own values and pay what they believe to be the market value at the time of the claim - regardless of the value you indicated and the premium that was based on that value.
It takes some negotiation to get a bit more and sometimes people are desperate to get their money, so they don’t waste time. When my girlfriend had her Levin stolen, the insurance company didn’t know that a Corolla GT (as the Levin was officially named in Malaysia) was not the same car as a normal Corolla sedan and certainly not the same price. But the insurance company offered the value based on the sedan which was way too low and it took a lot of convincing to get them to change the compensation figure. When I asked the officer why they had never questioned the value insured which was about double the price of a Corolla sedan, he said that they don’t tell customers how much to value but it does not mean that they will get the amount (in other words, if you are dumb enough to insure a high value and pay more premium, then too bad for you!).
Some companies are fast in paying out but usually you need to bug them. Unless you are wanting more, they would usually be quite ‘quick’ because they want to close the case too. The more you hassle them on the amount, the longer it takes.
Which are the good ones? Different people seem to have different experiences and it is not necessarily the case that the biggest one is the best. It is probably how they manage their processes and do their business.
For some time now, I have used AAM to buy my insurance and on the one occasion when my car was stolen temporarily and I had to go through the process, the AAM people were very helpful and handled everything for me. Fortunately I never had to reach the stage of compensation since the car was recovered after 5 days but I feel that had it reached that stage, it would have been advantageous having AAM represent me because they would have better contact and influence with their insurance company.
Some of the leading car companies also have their own panel of insurance companies and again, the car companies would have some influence in negotiating on claims. However, they would probably be more effective for accident claims than lost car claims. Often, if you have bought insurance through them and have an accident claim, their SC will handle everything and get the car repaired quickly because the insurance company allows them to start earlier (but for jobs under a certain value only).