Commercial Vehicle Insurance in Singapore: What Actually Changes the Price

The three levels of cover

Every quote you receive will be one of three things. The words are used loosely in conversation, so it is worth being exact.

Comprehensive

Covers damage to other people and to your own vehicle, including fire and theft. The dearest, and usually the only sensible choice for a vehicle you still owe money on — a lender will normally require it.

Third Party, Fire and Theft (TPFT)

Covers damage you cause to others, plus your own vehicle if it burns or is stolen. If you dent it yourself, that is yours to pay. A middle option that suits an older vehicle you own outright.

Third Party Only (TPO)

The legal minimum. Covers damage to other people and their property, nothing of yours. Cheapest, and a total loss means you carry all of it.

What moves the premium

The vehicle is only part of it. For a commercial policy the business matters as much as the metal.

Who drives it

Age, licence class and how long they have held it. A named-driver policy is usually cheaper than one that lets anybody drive, and a young or newly licensed driver moves the number more than most people expect.

What you carry, and where

The trade you are in is part of the assessment. A courier doing island-wide drops all day is a different risk from a contractor moving tools between two sites a week.

Your claims history

The single biggest lever you control. A clean run builds a no-claim discount; one claim resets a good part of it.

The vehicle itself

Value, age, weight class and whether it is a van, a lorry or a prime mover. Bigger and heavier is not automatically dearer, but it is assessed differently.

Your NCD is yours — do not lose it by accident

The no-claim discount you have built up belongs to you, not to your current insurer. When you move insurer it comes with you, provided you can show it.

What you need is last year's certificate or a letter from the outgoing insurer stating your NCD. Without the paperwork, a new insurer has nothing to give the discount against. People lose real money this way every year — simply for not having the document to hand.

Keep it with the log card. It is worth more than it looks.

When to start looking

Three to four weeks before the policy expires. That is long enough to get more than one quote and compare them properly.

Letting it lapse is the one genuinely expensive mistake here. Driving uninsured in Singapore is an offence, the vehicle is off the road until it is sorted, and a gap in cover follows you into the next quote.

What we do with it

Legion arranges commercial vehicle insurance alongside the vehicle itself. Mostly that means doing the annoying part for you. We gather the details once, put the same information to more than one insurer, and come back with the options side by side.

Kimi tracks the expiry date of every vehicle on our books and starts the conversation before it becomes urgent, rather than after. If you would rather she did not, say so and she will leave it alone.

Check it yourself

The official sources for everything above. Rules change — these are the pages that will be right when this one has gone stale.

• Commercial vehicle insurance — get quotes

  Send us the plate number and last year's certificate, and we will come back with options.

• COE renewal

  Insurance and COE renewal usually land in the same year. Worth planning together.

• LTA OneMotoring

  The official source for vehicle and road tax requirements.