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Hire and Reward Insurance

Hire and Reward insurance is designed to protect anybody using their vehicle to deliver other people or other people's goods in exchange for payment ("reward"). You'll likely have heard it most when discussing insurance for people working in the following industries:

Vans, HGVs, cars, motorbikes and more can all be covered by Hire and Reward insurance, whether the vehicle is owned by an individual or a company. Hire and Reward is designed to account for the additional risks of using your vehicle for business (as opposed to traditional Social, Domestic & Pleasure purposes such as going to the shops or down to the beach). This guide will explain what you need to know about Hire and Reward insurance, as well as where to get quotes for hire & reward activities like delivery insurance. If we haven’t addressed any of your questions, please ask us in the comments section at the bottom of the page.

Table of Contents

• What is Hire and Reward Insurance?
• Where to get cheap Hire and Reward Insurance
• What does Hire and Reward Insurance cover?
• Who needs Hire and Reward Insurance?
• How much is Hire and Reward Insurance?
• FAQ's

What is Hire and Reward Insurance?

Hire Reward insurance covers your vehicle while you're using it in return for payment. This could include anything from setting up a business helping people move their furniture from A to B or driving with the likes of Uber or Amazon Flex.

Like traditional vehicle insurance, it'll protect your vehicle in the event you're involved in an accident, and comes in three different levels—Third Party Only (TPO), Third Party Fire and Theft (TPFT) and Comprehensive. The table below demonstrates what you are and aren't covered for with each:

Types of Vehicle Insurance	Third Party Only	Third Party, Fire and Theft	Comprehensive
Repair if your vehicle is damaged in an accident
Repairs if your vehicle is damaged in a fire or stolen
Compensation if other people are injured in an accident
Damage to other people’s property

What is Pay As You Go Hire and Reward Insurance?

It can come both as a complete policy, covering both your business and personal (SD&P) travel, or as a "top-up" policy, like the one offered by Zego—although you will need to check with your SD&P insurance provider if they accept top-up coverage, as many don't.

Where to find Cheap Hire and Reward Insurance Quotes

Hire and Reward can be a complicated business, so many drivers prefer using a specialist provider/broker to help them find the best deal possible (in fact, this may be your only option as many mainstream vehicle insurance providers won't offer you Hire and Reward anyway). Our partners at QuoteZone work with a number of these specialists, so fill out a quote form and they'll connect you with some of the UK's leading Hire and Reward insurance businesses.

What does Hire and Reward Insurance Cover?

Hire and reward will protect you in the event that you're in an accident and are using your vehicle for certain business purposes, specifically driving in exchange for payment (e.g. delivery driver, taxi driver, man & van, etc.). Depending on the tier of cover (i.e. TPO, TPFT, Comprehensive) you'll be covered for third party only damages and possibly damages to your own vehicle.

It's designed to cover the additional risks that drivers face while using their vehicle for payment, such as:

If you opt for a full-time hire and reward policy (which is sometimes referred to as commercial vehicle insurance) then you should be covered by that policy at all times, irrespective of whether you're driving for work or not. This type of policy typically covers both your last-mile work driving as well as your personal driving. Check to be sure, though.

However, with a top-up/pay-as-you-go coverage, it's important you're clear about what you were doing when an accident occurred (i.e. working/not), so you know which of your insurances will be responsible for covering you—because your hire and reward policy would cover your work driving and the social, domestic & pleasure (SD&P) policy would cover personal driving.

And keep in mind if you haven't informed your insurer that you're using your car for business purposes then they may be well within their rights to refuse to pay out (and may even void your coverage all together)—so make sure you do so at the earliest possible moment.

Hire Reward Insurance Claim Examples

Obviously keep in mind that your vehicle insurance only covers your vehicle, not the goods you're carrying or any paying passengers. If you do want to be covered for either of these, then consider a goods in transit or public liability policy respectively.

What's Not Covered By Hire And Reward?

While it's important to read through your policy before signing up, here are a few things that hire and reward policies generally won't cover you for:

Who Needs Hire and Reward Insurance?

If you're using your vehicle in return for payment, you'll almost certainly need a form of Hire and Reward insurance. This could include (but isn't limited to)

If you're considering working in any of these industries, then almost all businesses will require you to have a valid form of Hire and Reward before they consider hiring you. Their requirements do vary, so make sure you've double-checked before you apply so you know what you'll need. And, like some insurers, some won't consider top-up/pay-as-you-go coverage as valid, so you may need to consider a full-time policy.

How Much Does Hire and Reward Insurance Cost?

Due to the risks mentioned above, Hire and Reward is almost always going to be significantly more expensive than your traditional vehicle insurance. While this may turn some away, the UK home delivery market is continuing to boom, up 23% on this time last year, with estimates suggesting it'll continue to grow by an average of 6.5% even after the end of the COVID-19 pandemic. That is to say, there's plenty of money to be made for an opportunistic driver.

That being said, our larger research piece into the cost of Delivery Driver insurance indicated that a typical driver can expect to pay around £140 per month for third party only (TPO) courier van insurance, £150 per month for motorbike courier insurance and around £220 per month for courier car insurance. While prices do fluctuate depending on factors such as age and location, these should give you an idea of what you can expect to find.

You'll find your price changes depending on several factors, most of which also affect your risk profile as an SD&P driver. These include:

It isn't too hard to imagine how these variables might impact your risk profile (and eventual policy cost). Smaller, less powerful or cheaper vehicles will be less expensive to cover than their larger, more powerful/expensive counterparts, and insurers will always be happier to cover a 42-year-old driver with 20 years of driving experience than a 22-year-old with 2, so if you are in the riskier half of any of these don't be surprised to see your policy on the more expensive side.

FAQ's

Market Statistics

Data taken from Adzuna and PayScale