We are getting a steady flow of visitors over the summer and i was wondering how easy/cheap it is to insure UK and Irish visitors on our cars. I'm hoping it would be cheaper than car hire rates!!

Does anyone have any recent experience?

Thank you

Call your insurance, mine is fully comp and automatically covers any Canadian/UK driver over 21 who has held a full licence for more than 2 years with no extra charge.
I don't know about residents from other countries.

You'd need to stop by an Autoplan broker and ask, every policy is unique. My policy allows for drivers with 10+ years experience to drive the vehicle.

Thank you folks!

Anyone with the owners permission is covered. You don't need to add drivers. Look at any restrictions you have put on, like 10 years driving experience (this is an add on you would have put on, not standard). If you use a third party insurer other than ICBC for your top up insurance, they often require 10 year North American driving experience.

Whether it is cheaper depends on whether they end up having a claim and leaving you to sort it out and pay any additional premium because of an accident. Unless ICBC can pin a claim on someone else s policy, you would be left carrying the can in the event of an at fault claim with a non resident driver. I would not let visitors loose with my vehicles. When traveling around long distances, we rent ourselves, it is cheaper than using our own.

I could well be wrong but if a visitor were to hire a car, they would not have insurance (such as ICBC) and that, in my experience has made hiring a car expensive. Whatever you do, don't just pay the car hire insurance without checking other insurance options, as that tends to be the expensive part

Rental companies carry ICBC insurance, $200k liability limit. Extra insurance is advised.

It was the insuring of a hire car that is my issue. I was fleeced when we first came here.... Still been fleeced but thats a different discussion!!!

I'm going to have a chat with Autoplan to find out the details of my policy and see if there is anyway to lessen the pain!

Check with the credit card issuer used to rent the car as some credit cards offer additional protection when renting a car.

Only increased CDW, not liability. 200k liability with the rental car is nowhere near enough. With Roadstar Plus we get $3m for rental cars.

Maybe it's different in Canada, but I have had US credit cards that offered additional liability but it's been a few years now, so might have changed there.

I don't know as I have cover from ICBC for 2 million, so never worry about other cover.

CDW only, as far as I know same for US cards, or the ones I have anyway.

People should just buy coverage on their policy, for the small amount it costs per year, so worth it. I think we pay 26 dollars or something per year for ICBC to cover rental cars and some other services, so worth it even if you only rent a couple times a year.

What exactly is ICBC? Also, is it really recommended to get insurance on top of whatever insurance you already get when you hire the car? That sounds dayum expensive

Especially when it's car insurance in Canada. Just got my renew through £250 in the UK for a year!!

In Canada I'll be adding a couple of 0s and a $ sign in front of it!