Choosing comprehensive car insurance

Comprehensive car insurance is one policy that holds 2 covers at the same time: an Own Damage cover that pays to repair or replace your own car, and the Third-Party cover the law requires, which pays for the people and the property you harm with your car. Kiwi Insurance sells it as the Comprehensive Plan, and this gives you comprehensive cover from the day the policy starts.

How car insurance works

You pay a premium once a year. In return, the insurer agrees to pay the cost of certain events that may never happen. The premium of every customer goes into one pool, and the few who suffer a loss in a given year are paid out of that pool. Your premium is small next to the cost of the events it covers, because most cars in the pool will not be in an accident this year.

2 things follow from that. The first is that the insurer has to write down exactly which events it will pay for, which is why a policy document lists both what is covered and what is not. The second is that the price you are quoted reflects how likely your car is to draw on the pool, which is why a new car in Mumbai costs more to insure than an older car in a smaller town.

Nearly every private car in India is insured under one of 3 arrangements. A Third-Party cover on its own is the legal minimum. An Own Damage cover bought on its own is held alongside a Third-Party cover you already hold. A Comprehensive Plan puts both halves in a single policy with a single premium, a single renewal date and a single claim process.

What this page is for

This page is written for the moment of choosing. It answers why comprehensive cover is recommended over Third-Party cover, how it compares with a standalone Own Damage cover, what it costs on a real car, what changes when the car is electric, and what changes when a bank still has a claim on the car. It does not restate the policy clause by clause. For that, read comprehensive car insurance explained, which is the full product guide and stays the reference for what the policy document covers.

Where optional covers fit

A Comprehensive Plan is the base. On top of it you can buy optional covers, which are extra protections that widen the plan for an extra premium. The rest of the market calls them add-ons or riders. Kiwi Insurance calls them optional covers, and the 3 words mean the same thing. Some of them remove a deduction the base plan would make, and some create cover the base plan never held at all. You can see the whole set on the optional covers page.

A Comprehensive Plan is not unlimited cover. It is the widest of the 3 arrangements, not a promise to pay for everything that happens to the car. Age-related damage, breakdown that no accident caused, and damage caused while breaking the law all stay outside it. The next few sections set out where the line falls.

The last row is included because it is the name most often confused with comprehensive cover on a renewal quote.

Comprehensive cover is recommended over Third-Party cover because Third-Party cover pays nothing towards your own car. The law asks you to insure the harm you may do to other people, and it stops there. The car sitting in your parking slot, which is usually the most valuable thing you own after your home, is left entirely on you. A Comprehensive Plan moves that cost off your own savings and meets the legal requirement in the same policy.

A Third-Party cover is a good policy for what it is. It is the cover the Motor Vehicles Act, 1988 makes compulsory, it pays for injury to a person you hit with no upper limit set by the policy, and it pays up to ₹7.5 lakhs for property belonging to someone else. It is also the cheapest motor policy you can buy. None of that changes the fact that after the accident, your own car is still standing at the roadside and no part of that policy will pay to move it.

Most damage to a car is damage nobody else can be billed for

A Third-Party claim needs a third party. A large share of the damage that happens to private cars in India has no third party in it at all. A stone thrown up by a lorry cracks the windscreen and the lorry is 3 kilometres away. Water rises in a basement car park overnight and nobody is at fault. A car is taken from outside a wedding hall and never seen again. In each of those, a Third-Party cover pays nothing, an Own Damage cover pays, and a Comprehensive Plan holds both.

Your own property is not a third party

This is the point most owners are surprised by, so it is worth stating plainly. The Third-Party cover pays for property belonging to somebody else. It does not pay for property belonging to you. If you damage your own things with your own car, there is no third party anywhere in the event, and a Third-Party cover has nothing to pay out on.

Take an evening at your own house. You reverse out of the gate in the dark, misjudge the turn, and drag the rear quarter panel of the car along your own boundary wall. 2 things are now damaged: the wall, and the car. The wall is your property, so the Third-Party cover does not pay for it. The car is your property, so the Third-Party cover does not pay for that either. On a Third-Party cover the whole evening comes out of your own pocket. On a Comprehensive Plan, the Own Damage half pays to put the car right, less your deductible, and you are left with only the wall.

A Third-Party cover insures other people against you. Only an Own Damage cover, whether inside a Comprehensive Plan or bought on its own, insures you against your own bad evening.

Your own property, and the things you leave in the car

The boundary wall is the clearest example of a wider rule. Your house, your gate, your garage door, the second car on the drive and the scooter parked beside it are all your property. None of them is a third party, so none of them is paid for by a Third-Party cover, and neither is the car that hit them. A Comprehensive Plan does not pay for the wall either, because it insures the car rather than the building. What it does is pay to put the car right, which on a Third-Party cover you would have paid for yourself on top of the wall.

There is a second kind of personal property that owners ask about, and the answer is less comfortable. A Comprehensive Plan insures the car, not the things inside it. If a window is forced in a car park and a laptop bag, a phone, a pram or the week's shopping is taken off the back seat, the policy pays for the broken glass, the damaged door and the lock. It pays nothing towards the bag or anything in it. The same applies to luggage on a long drive, tools in the boot, and documents left in the glovebox.

Fittings are treated differently from belongings. Anything permanently fitted to the car and declared to the insurer, such as a compressed natural gas (CNG) kit, a fitted music system or alloy wheels, can be insured as part of the car by being recorded on the policy and added to the Insured Declared Value (IDV). Anything fitted and not declared is in the same position as the shopping on the back seat. The 1 personal item with a cover of its own is the car key, which Key Replacement cover pays to replace after a loss or a theft.

What to do about belongings instead. Take valuables out of the car rather than out of sight, declare every non-factory fitting when you take or renew the policy so it forms part of the Insured Declared Value (IDV), and check whether your home or travel insurance already covers personal items away from home. A motor policy will not be persuaded to pay for a laptop, however the window was broken.

When a Third-Party cover is still the sensible answer

There is a point at which comprehensive cover stops being worth its price. Once a car is old enough that its Insured Declared Value (IDV) has fallen to a small figure, the own-damage premium can approach what the insurer would ever pay out, and the deductible eats into what is left. A 14-year-old car kept for short local trips, with an Insured Declared Value (IDV) of well under a lakh of rupees, is a reasonable case for carrying only the Third-Party cover the law requires.

A standalone Own Damage cover can only be bought where a Third-Party cover is already in force on the same car, which is why the row above counts 2 policies.

Comprehensive cover is not the only route to optional covers

This is worth correcting because it is often put the wrong way round. Optional covers attach to the own-damage part of a policy, with one exception, Personal Accident cover for passengers, which covers people rather than the car. The own-damage part exists inside a Comprehensive Plan, and it also exists inside a standalone Own Damage cover. So there are 2 routes to optional covers, not 1. What you cannot do is add any other optional cover to a Third-Party cover on its own, because a Third-Party cover holds nothing for your car and there is nothing for that cover to attach to.

Renewing after a long-term policy ends? A car bought new carries 3 years of Third-Party cover from the start. When the Own Damage year runs out at the end of year 1, you can either buy a standalone Own Damage cover for years 2 and 3, or wait and move to a Comprehensive Plan once the Third-Party cover expires. Both are normal. The first keeps the car insured in the meantime.

Most owners of a small petrol hatchback pay between ₹6,500 and ₹9,000 a year for a Comprehensive Plan, including the 18% Goods and Services Tax (GST). A sedan or a mid-size sport utility vehicle (SUV) usually lands between ₹11,000 and ₹18,000, and a large sport utility vehicle (SUV) between ₹22,000 and ₹34,000. Those are whole-plan figures, so they already contain the Third-Party premium the law sets.

The premium has 3 parts. The Third-Party part is fixed by the Insurance Regulatory and Development Authority of India (IRDAI) and is the same at every insurer for the same car. The own-damage part is set by the insurer and is where the quotes differ. On top of both comes the compulsory Personal Accident cover of ₹15 lakhs for the owner-driver, unless you already hold that cover on another vehicle you own.

Every average above is for a car 3 years old, insured in a Zone A city such as Mumbai, Delhi, Bengaluru, Chennai, Kolkata, Hyderabad, Ahmedabad or Pune, with no No Claim Bonus (NCB) applied and no optional covers added. A car of a different age will price differently, and the table under it shows how far. All figures include the 18% Goods and Services Tax (GST).

How the same car prices as it gets older

3 things move as a car ages. The Insured Declared Value (IDV) falls every year, which pulls the own-damage premium down with it. The No Claim Bonus (NCB) builds with every year you go without a claim, which pulls it down further. Against both, older cars need more repairs, so the rate applied to the Insured Declared Value (IDV) creeps up. The first 2 usually win.

The depreciation percentages are the ones the Insurance Regulatory and Development Authority of India (IRDAI) sets for working out the Insured Declared Value (IDV), and they are the same at every insurer. Past 5 years there is no fixed percentage, so the Insured Declared Value (IDV) is agreed between you and the insurer at renewal. Premium bands assume a Zone A city and no No Claim Bonus (NCB).

Does the price vary meaningfully between insurers?

The Third-Party half does not vary between insurers. That premium is notified by the Insurance Regulatory and Development Authority of India (IRDAI) and every insurer in India charges the same rupee figure for the same engine size. If 2 quotes for the same car differ on that line, one of them has read the engine size wrong.

The own-damage half does vary, and the gap is real. Insurers price the same car differently because they hold different claims records for that model in that city, they set the Insured Declared Value (IDV) within a range rather than at a single number, and they price optional covers on their own scales. 2 honest quotes on the same hatchback can sit 20% to 30% apart on the own-damage line before a single optional cover is added.

Compare 2 quotes on the Insured Declared Value (IDV) first and the premium second. A lower Insured Declared Value (IDV) always makes a premium look better and always makes a total loss pay less.

The one lever most owners forget

You can raise the deductible on purpose. The fixed deductible is ₹1,000 for engines up to 1500 cubic centimetres (cc), the size of a Maruti Suzuki Swift or a Hyundai i20, and ₹2,000 above that, the size of a Mahindra XUV700 or a Toyota Innova Crysta, but you can volunteer to carry more of each claim yourself in return for a lower own-damage premium. It is a sound move on a car you rarely claim on and a poor one on a car parked on a busy street, because you are agreeing to pay the first slice of every future claim to save on 1 premium.

An electric car needs the same Comprehensive Plan as a petrol car, but it is priced on different numbers and it carries one part that changes everything: the traction battery, which is the large battery pack that drives the wheels. On most electric cars sold in India the pack is worth 30% to 45% of the whole car, so it forms part of your Insured Declared Value (IDV), it lifts your own-damage premium, and it decides how quickly a repair turns into a total loss.

The Third-Party half is rated on power, not engine size

A petrol car's Third-Party premium is set by engine size in cubic centimetres (cc). An electric car has no engine, so the Insurance Regulatory and Development Authority of India (IRDAI) rates it on the power of the motor in kilowatts (kW), and sets the rate about 15% below the comparable petrol band. That discount is the regulator's, not an insurer's offer, so it is the same wherever you buy. It applies to the Third-Party premium only, not to the own-damage part. Your car's rated motor power is printed on its registration certificate (RC), so check the band there.

Third-Party rates are notified by the Insurance Regulatory and Development Authority of India (IRDAI) and revised from time to time. The rates in this table are before the 18% Goods and Services Tax (GST).

How the battery changes your Insured Declared Value (IDV)

The Insured Declared Value (IDV) is worked out from the car's list price less depreciation for its age, and on an electric car that list price already contains the battery. So the same body shell, badge for badge, carries a higher Insured Declared Value (IDV) in its electric form than in its petrol form. A compact sport utility vehicle (SUV) that lists at ₹9 lakhs as a petrol car and ₹14 lakhs as an electric car is insuring a different amount of money from day one.

That has 3 consequences on a real policy, and they are worth walking through before you agree an Insured Declared Value (IDV) at renewal.

• The own-damage premium rises with it. The own-damage part of the premium is a percentage of the Insured Declared Value (IDV). A higher Insured Declared Value (IDV) means a higher premium even though the Third-Party half is 15% cheaper, which is why an electric car often costs slightly more to insure overall than the petrol car it replaced.
• Total loss arrives sooner. A total loss is declared when the cost of repairing the car comes to more than 75% of its Insured Declared Value (IDV). A damaged battery pack can be a large enough single item to cross that line on its own, where the same impact on a petrol car would have been a repair.
• Setting the Insured Declared Value (IDV) low costs more here than anywhere else. Cutting the Insured Declared Value (IDV) to save on premium reduces what you are paid on a total loss. On an electric car, where the battery alone can be worth several lakhs of rupees, the shortfall you are agreeing to carry is much larger than on a petrol car of the same body size.

What the plan pays for on the battery, and what it does not

A Comprehensive Plan pays for sudden damage to the battery pack: an impact that cracks the casing, a fire, a flood that reaches the pack, or theft of the whole car. It does not pay for the pack losing range as it ages. That gradual fall in capacity is a manufacturing matter, and it is handled by the battery warranty the carmaker gives, which on most Indian electric cars runs to 8 years or 1,60,000 kilometres, whichever comes first.

There is one detail that catches owners out when the repair bill is worked out. On a repair claim the insurer applies depreciation part by part, and batteries have always been deducted at the highest rate, the same 50% as rubber, nylon and plastic parts. Applied literally to a traction battery, that would take a large amount off the most expensive part in the car. Insurers are still deciding how the old table should read for a part that did not exist when it was written, so the safe move on an electric car is to hold Zero Depreciation cover, which removes the age deduction on replaced parts altogether.

Charging equipment is not automatically part of the car. The portable charging cable supplied with the car is covered while it is in the car, because it came with the car. A wall box fixed to your garage wall is part of your property, so it is not covered by a motor policy at all. If you have spent real money on home charging, it belongs on a home insurance policy or on a separate cover.

What the government schemes do and do not do

2 national schemes come up whenever electric cars are discussed, and neither of them touches your insurance premium. The first is Faster Adoption and Manufacturing of Hybrid and Electric Vehicles (FAME), which ran in 2 phases from 2015 and gave a purchase subsidy on qualifying electric vehicles. The second is the Prime Minister Electric Drive Revolution in Innovative Vehicle Enhancement scheme, known as PM E-DRIVE, which replaced it in 2024 and directs its support mainly at electric two-wheelers, three-wheelers, buses, trucks, ambulances and charging points rather than at privately owned electric cars.

Both schemes change the price you paid for the car, and through that the list price your Insured Declared Value (IDV) is worked out from. Neither changes the premium. The only insurance concession written specifically for electric vehicles is the 15% lower Third-Party rate set by the Insurance Regulatory and Development Authority of India (IRDAI).

Every optional cover is set out in full on the optional covers page.

A Comprehensive Plan pays for exactly the same things on a car under a loan as on a car you own outright. Nothing in the cover narrows or widens because a bank is involved. What changes is who receives the money on a total loss, what the lender can insist on while the loan runs, and what you have to do to the policy once the loan is paid off.

When a car is bought on finance, the lender is recorded against the car in 2 places: on the registration certificate (RC), where it appears as the party the car is pledged to, and on the insurance policy, where it is recorded as the party with a financial interest in the car. Both entries exist for the same reason. The lender has put money into a car it does not drive, and it wants to be sure the car is insured and that it is paid first if the car is ever lost.

Removing the lender when the loan is paid off

The lender's interest does not fall away on its own. Once the last instalment is paid, the lender issues a no-objection certificate (NOC). That document goes to the regional transport office to have the pledge removed from the registration certificate (RC), and a copy goes to your insurer so the lender's name can be taken off the policy by endorsement. Until both are done, a total loss payout will still be sent to a lender you no longer owe anything to, and untangling that afterwards takes weeks you will not want to spend.

What lenders commonly require

• Comprehensive cover for the whole loan period. A Third-Party cover leaves the lender with an uninsured asset, so nearly every loan agreement rules it out until the loan is closed.
• Renewal without a gap. A break in cover is usually a breach of the agreement in its own right, even if nothing happens to the car during the gap.
• Proof of cover each year. Most lenders ask for a copy of the renewed policy document, and some collect it automatically from the insurer.
• An Insured Declared Value (IDV) that does not undercut the loan. A lender that is owed ₹6 lakhs has a clear interest in the car being insured for at least that much.

Every one of these is explained in full, with its cost and its own terms, on the optional covers page.

Do optional covers have their own claim limits?

They draw on the same claim, not on a separate one. When you claim, the insurer works out one payout for the damage and each optional cover you hold changes how that payout is worked out. Zero Depreciation cover removes the age deduction from it, Consumables cover adds the fluids and fixings into it, and so on. There is no second claim to raise and no second form to fill in.

What some optional covers do carry is a cap on how many times they will act in a policy year. Kiwi Insurance allows [number] Zero Depreciation claims a year, and [number] Engine Protect cover claims a year. A claim past that cap in the same policy year is still paid, but it is paid as a standard claim with the usual deductions.

Is there a limit on how many optional covers one policy can carry?

There is no maximum number of optional covers on one policy. You can hold every optional cover Kiwi Insurance offers on a single Comprehensive Plan, and on a new car many owners do. The limit is practical rather than contractual: each one adds premium, and several of them stop being worth their price once the car is past about 5 years old, because the amounts they protect have shrunk with the car's value.

If the car is stolen, when is the Insured Declared Value (IDV) paid?

Comprehensive cover does not pay the Insured Declared Value (IDV) on the day the car is stolen, and the reason is worth understanding. A stolen car may be recovered, so the insurer cannot pay out the Insured Declared Value (IDV) on the day it goes missing and then find the car in a compound 3 weeks later. There is a sequence, and it runs to a rhythm the police set as much as the insurer does.

Most theft claims are closed within 2 to 4 months of the theft, and the police stage is usually the longest part of it. Keep the second key safe from the day you buy the car, because a missing second key is the most common reason a theft claim stalls.

Is there a limit to how many times you can claim in a year?

A Comprehensive Plan sets no maximum number of own-damage claims in a policy year. You can claim as often as you genuinely need to, and every valid claim is paid. 3 things do change as the claims add up, and all 3 are worth knowing before you raise a claim for a scratch.

• Your No Claim Bonus (NCB) goes. On a standard plan the first claim of the year takes the whole discount to zero at the next renewal. On Kiwi Insurance Super NCB it drops one level instead.
• Some optional covers stop acting. Kiwi Insurance allows [number] Zero Depreciation claims a year and [number] Engine Protect cover claims a year. A later claim in the same year is paid with the usual deductions applied.
• Your renewal premium is rated for it. A car with several claims behind it is priced as a car more likely to claim again, separately from the No Claim Bonus (NCB) you lost.

The practical line most owners arrive at is simple. If the repair costs less than your deductible plus the No Claim Bonus (NCB) you would give up, pay for it yourself and keep the discount. If it costs more, claim.

The insurer decides first, on the assessor's report and the policy document, and you are told in writing which clause the decision rests on. If you disagree, there are 4 steps, taken in order: ask for the decision in writing, raise a grievance with the insurer, take it to the Insurance Regulatory and Development Authority of India (IRDAI) through its Bima Bharosa portal, and then go to the Insurance Ombudsman, whose decision binds the insurer but not you.

Borderline cases are less mysterious than they sound. Nearly all of them come down to one question: was this damage caused by a sudden event, or did it build up over time? A Comprehensive Plan pays for sudden events. It does not pay for age-related damage or for a part that simply stopped working. A bumper cracked in a collision is a sudden event. A bumper whose paint has faded after years in the sun is not. An engine that seizes because the oil was never changed is not a sudden event either.

Get a second opinion on the assessment, not just on the decision. Most disputes are really disagreements about the assessor's list of parts rather than about the policy document. Ask for the assessment report, take it to the garage, and have the garage put in writing what it disagrees with. That document moves a grievance further than an argument about principle ever will.

The discount applies to the own-damage part of the premium only. The Third-Party part is set by the Insurance Regulatory and Development Authority of India (IRDAI) and no discount applies to it.

What a claim does to it

On a standard plan, one claim takes the whole discount away at the next renewal and you start again at 20% the following year. That is the rule across the market, and it is why so many owners pay for small repairs themselves rather than claim for them.

Kiwi Insurance Super NCB works differently. A claim moves you down 1 step of the ladder instead of wiping the discount out. If you were at 75%, you renew at 60% rather than at zero, and you are back at 75% the year after that. The point of it is that a claim you were entitled to make should not cost you 4 years of discount as well as your deductible.

Kiwi Insurance Super NCB builds to 90% rather than stopping at 50%, and a claim costs you one level rather than the lot. Only with Kiwi

The 3 ways a No Claim Bonus is lost by accident

• Letting the policy lapse for more than 90 days. The discount survives a short gap between policies. Past 90 days it is gone, however many claim-free years you had built.
• Selling the car without asking for the certificate. The discount is earned by you, not by the car, but you have to ask the insurer for a No Claim Bonus (NCB) certificate before the policy is transferred to the buyer.
• Switching insurer without carrying the proof across. The new insurer has to see the certificate or the expiring policy document. Without it, the quote is written at zero.

Can you insure a car that already has damage?

You can take comprehensive cover on a car that already has damage, but the damage that is already there will not be covered. This comes up most often on a car that has been off the road, or one bought second hand with marks already on it. The insurer will ask to see the car, either through a short video call or at a garage, and the assessor notes the damage that is already there. The policy is then issued with those items recorded as pre-existing, which means a later claim for that same dented door will be declined while everything else on the car is fully covered.

The inspection usually records 3 kinds of detail.

• Dents, cracks and scrapes. Each one is noted, usually with a photograph, so you and the insurer agree on what was there before the policy started.
• Broken or missing parts. A cracked lamp, a missing mirror or a chipped windscreen is recorded in the same way.
• Fittings. A compressed natural gas (CNG) kit, a fitted music system or alloy wheels are checked against what you declare, so they can be added to the Insured Declared Value (IDV).

There is no advantage in hiding old damage, because the assessment at claim time shows which damage is fresh and which is old. The straightforward route is to get the existing damage repaired first, have the car looked at, and then insure it clean. If you repair it after the policy has started, keep the garage bill and photographs of the finished work, and ask your insurer whether it will look at the car again and remove the note from the policy by endorsement.

What happens after a gap in cover

A car whose policy has expired has a break in cover. For a short lapse, most insurers renew without fuss but the No Claim Bonus (NCB) is at risk past 90 days. For a longer lapse, the insurer will want to see the car before issuing comprehensive cover again, because it has no record of what happened to it while it was uninsured. That check is a formality on a car in good condition and it is usually done within a day.

Driving uninsured is not a small thing. Under the Motor Vehicles Act, 1988, driving without at least a Third-Party cover carries a fine of ₹2,000, up to 3 months in prison, or both for a first offence, and a fine of ₹4,000, up to 3 months in prison, or both for a second. The Act sets a single repeat figure, so a third offence and every offence after it carries the same ₹4,000 fine, up to 3 months in prison, or both, rather than rising again. Beyond the penalty, every rupee of harm you cause to another person while uninsured is yours to pay.

Endorsements are written changes to a live policy. The insurer issues an updated policy document each time, and the updated document is the one that counts. The full list of endorsement types and what each one does is set out on the India Motor Tariff (IMT) endorsements page.

Can you drop to a Third-Party cover part way through the year?

You cannot downgrade in the middle of the policy year. A Comprehensive Plan is issued as a single contract for 12 months, and the own-damage half is not something you can hand back for a refund on its own. What you can do is cancel the policy by telling the insurer, and take a new Third-Party cover. Motor insurance has no free-look period, so any refund for the unused part of the year depends on the insurer's cancellation terms and on whether a claim has been made in that year. You also lose the No Claim Bonus year you were part way through earning. The Third-Party part is compulsory, so it cannot be cancelled while the car is on the road unless another valid Third-Party cover is already in place. Kiwi Insurance's own terms are [Kiwi Insurance cancellation and refund terms].

A car bought new is the one easy case. It carries 3 years of Third-Party cover from the start, and on the usual bundled policy only the Own Damage part is renewed each year. If you no longer want your own car covered, you simply do not renew the Own Damage part when its year ends, and the Third-Party cover carries on until its own end date.

For every other car, the sensible route is to let the plan run to its renewal date and choose a Third-Party cover then. If the car is on a loan, the choice is not yours to make at all until the loan is cleared, as set out in what a car loan changes.

Kiwi PayFirst, Kiwi InstaCash and Kiwi Insurance Flexi Repair are optional covers that are included at no extra cost on a Comprehensive Plan at the moment. They are not part of the base regulation, so they are listed here rather than in the cover itself.