Roadside Assistance cover for your bike

Roadside Assistance cover is an optional cover that sends help to wherever your two-wheeler has stopped. It pays for the help itself: a mechanic sent out to you, a punctured tyre repaired where the bike stands, fuel brought to you, a jump start for a flat battery, or a van to carry the bike to a garage. It is bought on top of an Own Damage cover or a Comprehensive Plan, and it is the only part of a bike policy that covers a breakdown, because a breakdown is not damage and no base plan pays for one.

That last point is the whole reason the cover exists. A Comprehensive Plan pays when something happens to your bike: a collision, a fall, a fire, a flood, a theft. A breakdown is the bike simply refusing to go, with nothing broken by an outside event. Your policy has no answer to that. Roadside Assistance cover is the answer, and on a bike it costs less than a tank of fuel for the year.

A Comprehensive Plan pays nothing when your bike simply breaks down. Roadside Assistance cover is the only part of a policy that helps with that.

It attaches to the own-damage half of a plan

Roadside Assistance cover attaches to the own-damage side of your policy, so you need either a Comprehensive Plan or a standalone Own Damage cover to carry it. It cannot be added to a Third-Party policy held on its own, because a Third-Party policy covers other people and never your own vehicle. It also cannot be added part way through a policy year. The 2 moments you can take it are the day you buy the policy and the day you renew it.

Optional cover, add-on and rider mean the same thing

You will see 3 words for this kind of extra: optional cover, add-on and rider. They all mean the same thing. Each one is an extra you choose on top of your base plan, for an extra premium, to cover 1 specific need the base plan leaves out. Kiwi Insurance uses the words “optional cover” throughout. So if another insurer’s quote lists an “RSA add-on” or a “roadside assistance rider”, it is the same cover this page describes. Almost every optional cover attaches to the own-damage half of a policy, with one exception, Personal Accident cover, which protects the rider rather than the two-wheeler.

Using it is a service, not a repair claim

An assistance request is not a claim. When you raise one, nobody assesses damage and no repair money is paid out. A mechanic or a recovery van is sent to you and the bill for that trip goes to the insurer. No repair money leaves the policy, so your No Claim Bonus stays as it is. The No Claim Bonus is the discount you build for every year you ride without making a claim, and it is worth 20% of your own-damage premium after 1 clean year, rising to 50% after 5. Raising 3 assistance requests in a year and then renewing still gets you the full discount you have earned.

What if the breakdown turns out to be accident damage? If the mechanic reaching you finds that the bike stopped because of a knock, a fall or a collision rather than a fault, the trip is still handled under Roadside Assistance cover. The repair that follows becomes an own-damage claim, and that claim does affect your No Claim Bonus in the ordinary way. The 2 things are decided separately.

One of the 2 covers still worth holding on a bike past 10 years

Most optional covers are priced against what your bike is worth, and a two-wheeler past 10 years is worth very little, so most of them stop repaying their price. The 2 that do not are Roadside Assistance cover and Pillion Rider cover. Neither is priced off the bike's falling value. Roadside Assistance cover gets more useful as the bike ages, because an older two-wheeler breaks down more often. Pillion Rider cover protects the person riding behind you, and a person does not lose value with age. You can see both alongside everything else on the bike optional covers page.

The last 2 rows are the ones riders most often take for this cover on a renewal quote.

Shares are indicative and describe what assistance requests on two-wheelers are raised for, not what goes wrong with bikes generally.

It covers faults, not only accidents

This is the question riders ask most often, and the answer is the opposite of what people expect. Roadside Assistance cover is built for the purely mechanical and electrical, with no accident anywhere near it. A bike that will not start outside your office, a scooter whose rear tyre has gone down in a car park, a commuter bike that has run dry on a bypass: all 3 are exactly what the cover is for. An accident is the one thing that brings your own-damage cover into play instead, and even then the trip out to you is still handled here.

It also has nothing to do with whose fault the breakdown is. A chain that snaps because it was never adjusted is covered for the trip out just as a chain that snaps at 40,000 kilometres is. What is not covered is the part and the repair, which is the subject of the limitations section further down.

Rolling a two-wheeler even 200 metres on a flat tyre usually destroys the tyre, and on an alloy wheel it can bend the rim as well. That is a ₹1,500 tyre turning into an ₹8,000 wheel.

Before anything else, get yourself off the road. Move the bike to the left edge or onto the footpath if you can do it safely, put the hazard lights on if the bike has them, and stand behind the barrier rather than beside the bike. Then raise the assistance request. Nothing in this cover is worth standing in a live lane for.

A flat tyre is the reason for roughly 2 in every 5 assistance requests raised on a bike, and whether it is fixed at the roadside comes down to 1 thing: whether the tyre is tubeless or tube-type. A tubeless tyre is plugged from the outside and re-inflated where the bike stands, in about 15 minutes, with the wheel still on the bike. A tube-type tyre means taking the wheel off and the tyre off the rim, which is a workshop job on most bikes.

A car carries a spare wheel and a jack, so a driver has a fallback. A two-wheeler carries neither, and there is nowhere on a bike to put them. That is why this one fault sends so many riders to this cover, and why a cover costing a few hundred rupees a year is worth having on a bike even when a car owner might skip it.

What the cover pays for, and what you pay for

• The cover pays for the trip and the labour. Sending a mechanic out to you, and the time spent plugging and inflating the tyre, is what your premium has bought.
• You pay for anything consumed. The rubber plug, a new tube, or a new tyre if the old one is finished, comes out of your own pocket at the going rate.
• A sidewall cut is not repairable. If the hole is in the side of the tyre rather than the tread, no plug will hold it, and the outcome is transport to a garage and a new tyre.
• A rear puncture on a scooter takes longer. The rear wheel is half buried under the bodywork on 1 side, so even a tubeless plug is slower than the same job on a geared bike.

Does using it for a puncture use up one of your assistance requests for the year? It does. A puncture is 1 event and it uses 1 request, exactly as a jump start or a fuel delivery does. There is no cheaper category for small jobs, which is worth knowing if you ride somewhere where punctures are frequent.

A flat battery is the reason for roughly 1 in every 4 assistance requests on a bike, and it has become far more common in the last decade for 1 simple reason: the kick-start has disappeared. A bike with a kick lever could be started with a flat battery by a rider with a firm leg. Nearly every new scooter and a growing share of new bikes have no kick lever at all, and a fuel-injected engine needs battery power to run its fuel pump before it will fire, so a flat battery now means a stationary bike.

What help actually does when it reaches you

• A jump start from a portable pack. The mechanic brings a battery pack rather than another vehicle, clips it on, and the engine fires. This is the outcome in most cases.
• A check of why it went flat. A light left on overnight is one thing. A charging fault that will flatten the battery again in 20 kilometres is another, and you want to know which you have before you ride off.
• Transport to a garage if the battery itself has failed. A battery past 3 or 4 years will often take a jump and then die again at the next set of lights, and there is no point starting it twice.
• Nothing towards a new battery. A battery that has stopped holding charge is age related damage, which no motor policy pays for on any vehicle.

On a scooter with no kick lever, a flat battery is not an inconvenience. It is a two-wheeler that cannot be moved except by pushing it or lifting it into a van.

Can you bump start a bike instead? On a geared bike, sometimes: you can roll it in second gear with the clutch in and drop the clutch. On a scooter you cannot, because an automatic transmission has nothing to bump against. That difference is most of the reason riders on an automatic two-wheeler raise more battery requests than geared-bike riders do.

Fuel delivery is the third most common assistance request on a bike and a far bigger share of requests than it is on cars. A commuter bike holds 10 to 12 litres and a scooter holds 5 to 6, against 35 to 50 in a car, so the margin for error is a fraction of the size. The old mechanical reserve tap that gave you a guaranteed last litre has gone from fuel-injected two-wheelers, replaced by a warning light that many riders learn to ignore.

When you raise the request, a mechanic brings enough fuel to reach the nearest pump, commonly 2 to 5 litres on a bike. You pay for the fuel itself at the pump price. The cover pays for bringing it to you, which is the part that would otherwise mean a walk along a highway with a bottle.

Fuel delivery on an electric two-wheeler does not exist. There is no equivalent of a can of petrol for a flat battery, which changes the whole shape of this cover on an electric two-wheeler. That is set out in the electric two-wheeler section.

Distances are indicative for a two-wheeler policy and are written into your own policy document.

Can you choose the garage it goes to?

You can. The van will take your bike to the address you name, and the distance allowance applies the same way whether that is a network garage or the mechanic you have used for years. There is 1 practical reason to choose a cashless partner garage anyway: if the breakdown turns out to be accident damage and a repair claim follows, an approved bill at a partner garage goes straight to the insurer, so no repair money ever leaves your own account. Sending the bike to your usual mechanic instead means paying that bill yourself and claiming it back.

Why a scooter is more likely to need the van than a bike

Scooters have small wheels, no kick lever, an automatic transmission that cannot be bump started, and a rear wheel half buried under the bodywork. Every one of those makes a roadside fix less likely and transport more likely. A geared bike with a dead battery can often be rolled and bump started. A scooter with a dead battery is going in the van.

A driver whose car stops at night has a locked cabin, hazard lights running off the battery, a roof, and somewhere to sit. A rider has none of those. You are standing at the edge of a road in the dark in riding gear, next to a two-wheeler that is barely visible, often with a helmet in one hand and a bag on your back, and if the battery is flat your hazard lights are not working either. This is the case for the cover that has nothing to do with the repair bill, and it is the reason a rider should raise the request earlier than a driver would.

• Get off the road first, then raise the request. Stand behind a barrier, on a footpath, or well away from the edge of the road. The two-wheeler can be recovered from wherever it ends up.
• Make yourself visible, not the bike. A phone torch held up, or a reflective strip on your jacket, does more than anything you can do to the bike.
• Share your location through the app rather than describing it. A location pin on a bypass at 10 pm is worth 5 minutes of explaining landmarks, and it is what most delays come down to.
• Do not start a roadside repair yourself in the dark. A chain job by torchlight at the edge of a highway is how a breakdown turns into an accident.
• Wait away from the bike, not on it. Sitting on a stationary bike at the edge of a fast road puts you exactly where a vehicle drifting left will go.

A breakdown at night is a visibility problem before it is a mechanical one. Park the two-wheeler off the road, stand away from it, and keep a light on yourself rather than on the bike. Arrival times, and what moves them, are set out further down this page.

What it costs on a scooter, by engine size

Roadside Assistance cover on a two-wheeler is priced off engine size rather than off what the two-wheeler is worth, so an older one does not pay less and a nearly new one does not pay more. The bands below are the ones that matter on a two-wheeler.

Prices are indicative, before the 18% Goods and Services Tax (GST), for a two-wheeler with a clean record. The Yamaha Aerox 155 is a scooter and the TVS Apache RTR 160 a motorcycle in the same engine band, priced the same way. Your own price depends on your two-wheeler and is shown when you get a quote.

Scooter cover and bike cover are the same product. A scooter is insured on the same two-wheeler policy as a bike, with the same optional covers and the same rules for claims and renewal. The Kiwi Insurance bike insurance guide is the main page for all two-wheeler insurance. It sets out the plan types side by side, what each one costs, and how renewal and claims work, for scooters and bikes alike.

On an electric two-wheeler the most likely reason to raise an assistance request is that the battery has run flat with no charger within range. It is not a fault and nothing has broken, but the outcome is identical to a breakdown: a vehicle that will not move. There is no equivalent of a can of fuel for an electric vehicle (EV), so the answer is always transport, either to the nearest charging point or to your own address. That single difference makes Roadside Assistance cover the most useful optional cover an electric two-wheeler can carry.

A petrol bike that runs dry is back on the road in 20 minutes for the price of 2 litres. An electric scooter that runs flat 18 kilometres from home is going in a van, and without this cover that van costs you between ₹800 and ₹2,000 out of your own pocket. The cover itself costs less than that for a whole year.

What it costs on an electric two-wheeler, by motor power

An electric two-wheeler has no engine size, so it is banded by the continuous power of its motor in kilowatts (kW) instead. Roadside Assistance cover costs a little more on an electric bike than on a petrol one of similar size, because the usual outcome is a van rather than a fix at the kerb.

Prices are indicative and before GST. The rated motor power of your electric two-wheeler is printed on its registration certificate (RC). The Insured Declared Value (IDV) of an electric two-wheeler is built mostly from the battery, which is the single most expensive part on it, but Roadside Assistance cover is 1 of the few covers not worked out from that value.

A flat battery on an electric two-wheeler is not damage. Running out of charge is the same kind of event as running out of fuel. No policy pays for it, and it is not a claim. What Roadside Assistance cover pays for is the van that moves you, which on an electric two-wheeler is the only thing that will.

On a high-cc bike

A high-cc bike such as a Royal Enfield Classic 350 or a KTM 390 Duke weighs 170 to 200 kilograms. A commuter two-wheeler weighs 110 to 150 kilograms. Pushing the heavier two-wheeler even a short way is hard work, and on a slope it is unsafe. So a flat battery or a puncture is far more likely to end in an assistance request. These bikes are also ridden further from home, where the free towing distance matters most. The price of the cover is at the top of the range as a result: up to ₹600 a year on a larger bike, against ₹150 to ₹350 on a commuter bike or a scooter.

What does not change

The rules stay the same whatever you ride. The yearly number of assistance requests, the free towing distance, the need for a valid licence and the exclusions are the same on a scooter as on a large motorcycle. A scooter or a bike used for delivery needs a commercial policy, whatever its size.

Going past your 4 requests does not close the service. Help still comes. What changes is that the bill for that trip comes to you instead of to the insurer.

Does it have its own claim limit, or draw on the same claim process?

Roadside Assistance cover has its own separate count and its own separate process. It does not draw on the own-damage claim process at all. There is no assessment, no deductible and no paperwork beyond the request itself, and it is not recorded against your policy as a claim. Other optional covers on a two-wheeler policy work the opposite way. Zero Depreciation cover, Consumables cover and Engine Protect cover all act inside 1 single own-damage claim and change how that 1 payout is worked out. Roadside Assistance cover stays outside that process entirely.

Own-damage claims have no yearly cap of their own. There is no fixed limit on the number of own-damage claims you can make in a year on a two-wheeler policy. Each claim does affect your No Claim Bonus at the next renewal, which is why many riders pay for a very small repair themselves. Assistance requests are counted separately, against the yearly number above.

The rider who is out of the city, or out after dark

A weekend rider on a 350cc bike such as a Royal Enfield Classic 350 or a Royal Enfield Hunter 350, 80 kilometres from home on a highway, is a long way from a garage and a long way from anybody who knows the bike. The same is true of a rider stopped at 11pm inside the city. This is the profile where the towing limit written into your policy document matters more than the price of the cover, because the distance to the nearest garage is the whole question.

Where it does less for you

• A short, familiar, daylight ride. If your whole week is 3 kilometres each way on roads you know, with a mechanic you have used for years, you can usually push the bike or call the mechanic yourself.
• A second vehicle in the house. The cost of a breakdown is mostly the cost of being stranded. If somebody can come for you, that cost is much smaller.
• A bike still inside the manufacturer’s free assistance period. A new two-wheeler usually carries 1 to 3 years of the maker’s own roadside service. Check when it ends before you pay twice, and take this cover the year it runs out.

Roadside Assistance cover costs ₹150 to ₹350 a year before GST on a commuter bike or a scooter, and ₹250 to ₹600 a year on a larger bike or an electric two-wheeler. It is one of the cheapest optional covers a two-wheeler policy can carry. At the bottom of that range it works out at ₹13 a month, which is less than a single roadside puncture repair costs you in cash.

Does the price change much between insurers?

It changes, but not by enough to choose an insurer on. The whole spread across the market on a commuter bike is roughly ₹200 a year. What does vary meaningfully is what you get for it: how many assistance requests you are given in a policy year, how far the bike is carried, and how thin the operator network is on the roads you actually ride. Compare those 3 first, and treat the rupee difference as the last thing to look at.

What it saves on the cheapest kind of breakdown

Take the most ordinary case there is: a 110 cubic centimetre (cc) scooter such as a Honda Activa or a TVS Jupiter, with a flat rear tyre, 6 kilometres from home, on a weekday evening.

What Kiwi Insurance adds to that

The 5 steps above are the same everywhere. What changes between insurers is how much of it you have to hold together yourself, and what happens on the day a breakdown turns out to be something bigger.

If you called a local mechanic yourself instead

The honest answer is that the money cannot be paid back to you. Roadside Assistance cover pays an operator it has sent, not a bill you have already met. If you found somebody at the roadside, agreed a price and paid it in cash, that is your own money and an insurer will not normally return it, because there is no way to check what was done or what a fair price for it was. The 1 thing worth doing in that situation is to raise the request anyway before you agree anything, because you will often find the wait is shorter than the haggling.

What if you genuinely cannot reach anybody? Raise the request through the app first so there is a record of the attempt and the time. If no operator can reach you at all, some insurers will look at a bill you paid yourself as an exception, if they choose to, and only up to a low cap. Treat that as a long shot rather than a plan, and keep the receipt.

How soon help reaches you

Across the industry, a mechanic usually reaches a rider in a city within about an hour. On a highway or late at night it can take longer, because the operator covering that stretch is further away and often runs 1 van across a long section. The single biggest thing in your control is the location pin: a described location on a bypass routinely adds 20 minutes, and an accurate pin removes it. Kiwi Insurance aims to reach you within [arrival time].

Exclusions that apply whatever optional covers you hold

Some rules apply to the whole policy, so no optional cover can get round them. They apply to Roadside Assistance cover in the same way as to every other part of a two-wheeler policy.

• Age-related damage. Parts that give up through age and use, such as a battery that no longer holds charge or a stretched chain, are never paid for. Help still comes to you, but the new part is your own cost.
• No valid licence. If the person riding does not hold a valid licence for that class of two-wheeler, the policy stops paying for your own two-wheeler, and this cover stops too.
• Riding under the influence. If the rider has been drinking or has taken drugs, the policy does not pay for damage to the two-wheeler, and this cover does not respond.
• Commercial use on a private policy. Food delivery, courier work and hire all need a commercial two-wheeler policy. A private policy does not cover them.
• Racing and off-road events. Riding in a race, a speed test or an off-road event is outside Own Damage cover and this cover, however the bike stopped.

Riding someone else's bike, or lending yours out

The cover follows the bike, not the rider. If a friend borrows your bike with your permission and it breaks down, they can raise the request on your policy and help will come. If you break down on a friend's bike, your own policy does nothing for you, because your policy is attached to your bike sitting at home. The 1 condition that matters is a valid licence: whoever is riding must hold a licence for that class of two-wheeler, or the policy stops paying for your own bike, this cover included.

The friend who borrows your bike does not need insurance of their own. Your policy covers the two-wheeler, whoever is riding it with your permission. A missing licence is a different matter. If an unlicensed friend has an accident on your bike, the insurer can refuse the own-damage claim for your two-wheeler. Injury or damage caused to other people is still paid to them under the third-party part of your policy, but the insurer can then recover that money from you as the owner. Check the licence before you hand over the keys.

Who decides when something does not clearly fall under the cover

The insurer decides in the first instance, through the operator's report of what was found at the roadside. Most disputes on this cover are small and factual: whether a trip went past the free distance, whether a second call on the same day was 1 event or 2, or whether a two-wheeler was being used for work. If you disagree, there are 3 steps, and each of them is free.

Keep 1 thing from every assistance request. Keep the request number the app gives you. It is the only record that ties a date, a location and an outcome together, and it is the first thing anybody will ask you for if a trip is later questioned.

Do optional covers renew by themselves?

Optional covers do not renew by themselves. Every optional cover ends with the policy year it was bought for, and has to be chosen again at each renewal. A renewal quote that simply repeats last year's premium may not carry it, and optional covers never move across when you change insurer. Checking the optional covers list on the renewal quote is the difference between holding this cover and thinking you hold it.

Is there a maximum number of optional covers 1 policy can carry?

There is no limit on the number of optional covers 1 bike policy can carry. You can hold every optional cover a two-wheeler policy offers at the same time. What limits you in practice is whether each one is worth its price on your own bike, and that changes with the two-wheeler's age rather than with any rule. The table in the section on covers that pair with this one sets that out by age.

What you can and cannot change mid-policy

Some things on a two-wheeler policy can be changed during the policy year through an endorsement, which is a written change to the policy document. Others have to wait for your next renewal. This table shows which is which.

An endorsement can correct or add a detail on a running policy. It cannot add a cover. For every standard change you can make during the year, see the India Motor Tariff (IMT) endorsements guide for two-wheelers.

Buying a two-wheeler policy with Roadside Assistance cover on it needs 5 things: your Registration Certificate (RC), a valid riding licence, identity and address proof, your previous policy number if you are renewing, and your own mobile number and email. Nothing has to be posted and nothing has to be signed in person. Every detail on the policy can be corrected afterwards, and the sooner it is corrected the less it costs you at the moment you need help.

The documents needed to buy

• The Registration Certificate (RC). The registration number, the engine and chassis numbers, the date of first registration and the engine size or motor power all come from it. On a bike this is what the price of the cover is built from.
• A valid riding licence. It is not uploaded at the quote stage, but it is asked for at a claim and at an assistance request, so it has to exist and be current for the class of two-wheeler you own.
• Your previous policy number, if this is a renewal or a switch. It is what carries your No Claim Bonus across to a new insurer. The bonus carries across as long as the old policy is renewed within 90 days of its expiry. Without the number, the discount has to be rebuilt from zero.
• Identity and address proof. The regulator’s customer identification rules apply to every motor policy. Any 1 of an Aadhaar, a passport, a voter card or a driving licence is accepted.
• A mobile number and an email address you actually use. The policy document, the renewal reminder and the assistance helpline number all arrive there.

No inspection to buy this cover. An inspection of the bike is asked for when a policy has lapsed and is being restarted, not when an optional cover is added to a live policy or taken at renewal on time. Roadside Assistance cover on its own never triggers one.

How to renew with Roadside Assistance cover, step by step

Renewing takes 5 steps online. For documents, you need only your registration number or your previous policy number, since the details on your Registration Certificate (RC) are already on file. Renew before the expiry date and no inspection of the two-wheeler is needed.

The bike insurance renewal guide covers renewal in more depth, including what happens if your policy has already expired.

What if someone entered the wrong details?

Wrong details are corrected, not fatal. A misspelt name, a wrong engine number, a wrong date of birth or a registration number typed with a zero instead of the letter O is fixed by an endorsement, which is a formal correction the insurer issues against the same policy. Call the helpline or write in with the Registration Certificate (RC) attached, and a corrected policy document is issued. Do it before you need the policy rather than after, because at an assistance request or a claim the details on the policy are checked against the details on the bike, and a mismatch on the registration number can hold up a request until it is corrected.

If the registration details are wrong, or an RC transfer is still pending

A bike bought second hand has to have the policy transferred into your name, and that is a separate act from the RC transfer at the Regional Transport Office (RTO). The 2 are usually done together. You can hold cover while the RC transfer is pending: the policy is issued against the registration number, the transfer application is shown as proof, and the policy is endorsed into your name once the new Registration Certificate is issued. Until the policy carries your name, an own-damage claim can be refused, because the person insured and the person who owns the bike are not the same. Roadside Assistance cover still functions in the meantime, because sending a mechanic to a bike is a service rather than a payment against ownership, but do not leave it there.

If your mobile number or email has changed since the last policy

Update them before you renew, not after. The renewal reminder, the policy document, the one-time password that opens your account and the helpline confirmation of an assistance request all go to the number and address on file. Changing them is a free endorsement and takes one call or one form. A rider whose old number is on the policy is a rider who never sees the renewal reminder, and a lapsed policy costs a great deal more than a 2 minute correction.

Cancelling after you buy

A 1-year bike policy has no free look period. That window, in which a new policy can be handed back for a refund, is a feature of health and life insurance policies, not motor policies. A bike policy can still be cancelled by telling the insurer. The refund for the unused part of the year depends on the insurer’s cancellation terms and on whether a claim has been made. Kiwi Insurance’s own terms are in [Kiwi Insurance cancellation and refund terms]. Cancelling ends the whole policy, so you cannot drop Roadside Assistance cover on its own and keep the rest. The compulsory Third-Party part cannot be cancelled while the bike is on the road without other valid cover.

Renewing for more than one year at a time

A two-wheeler can be insured for more than a single year, and long-term two-wheeler policies of 2 and 3 years are sold in India. They are usually cheaper across the term than the same cover bought one year at a time, because the third-party premium is locked at the rate on the day you buy rather than at whatever the rate becomes each April. The trade-off is that optional covers on a long-term policy are set at the start and cannot be changed mid-term, and the whole premium is paid up front. Roadside Assistance cover is priced per year of the term either way. Long-term bike insurance sets out what each term length costs.

Is there a discount for renewing early? An early-renewal discount is not a standard part of bike insurance in India. Kiwi Insurance [offers / does not offer] an early-renewal discount on two-wheeler policies. What early renewal protects is worth more than a discount would be: your No Claim Bonus stays intact, there is no break in cover, and there is no pre-renewal inspection of the bike. Let the policy expire and the bonus survives only inside a 90 day grace period, after which the whole discount goes back to zero and has to be rebuilt from 20%.

What changes at renewal

• Optional covers do not carry themselves forward. Every optional cover, this one included, ends with the policy year it was bought for and has to be ticked again on the renewal quote. Nothing renews by itself.
• Your assistance request count resets. The 4 requests are per policy year. Renew and you start the new year with all 4, however many you used in the year before.
• Your bonus moves up a step, or back to zero. A clean year moves you up the ladder. An own-damage claim in the year takes the discount back to zero at the next renewal. An assistance request is neither, because it is not a claim.
• The premium follows the bike’s value down. The Insured Declared Value (IDV) of a two-wheeler falls every year, so the own-damage premium usually falls with it. Roadside Assistance cover is the exception, because its price is set by engine size and not by value.

Prices are indicative and before GST, for a commuter bike with a clean record, and every band widens for larger and electric two-wheelers. Roadside Assistance cover, for example, runs ₹250 to ₹600 on a larger bike or an electric two-wheeler. Your own price for each cover depends on your bike and is shown when you get a quote.

Adding covers does not change how a claim is raised. However many optional covers a two-wheeler policy carries, there is still 1 claim and 1 payout. The covers change how that payout is worked out. Roadside Assistance cover is the exception, because it acts before any claim exists.

“A rider standing at the edge of a highway at night is not waiting for a policy. They are waiting for somebody to turn up. We built Kiwi Insurance around the turning up.” — Saurav Jaiswal, Co-founder, Kiwi Insurance