What do you mean by 'excess'?

If you make a claim on an existing insurance policy, for example your car, the excess is the amount you are required to pay towards the cost of a claim. When you take out the policy there can be two types of excess, either compulsory or voluntary.

Compulsory excess

When you get a quote from the insurer you will see a set excess amount. It is not always negotiable -  it is the amount you will have to pay towards any claim you make. The amount of excess you will have to pay will all depend on certain factors, e.g. for a car it would depend on the type of car and your age.

Voluntary excess

This is an amount of excess that you can control and set yourself; some people add extra voluntary excess on top of the compulsory excess, as this can reduce your premium. Ensure you pick an amount that you can afford if you were to make a claim.

Paying excess for an insurance claim can be expensive, but there is a way to recover the excess cost - this is called Excess Protection.

For example, if you buy your car insurance policy with an excess of £400 and you have an accident that causes £2000 of damage to your car, the excess on your insurance policy was £400. Your insurer will ask you to pay that £400, and your insurer will pay the other £1,600. Once you’ve paid the excess you claim it back with your Excess Insurance.

By purchasing Excess Protection, you will be saving yourself from excess costs. For example, if you pay £80 a year for excess protection on an excess of £500, when you make a claim you will have saved £420.  

How does it work?

It is an insurance policy that covers the cost of your excess if you should need to claim on another insurance policy.

If you claim on your insurance, you will pay the excess amount that you entered when buying your policy, but with Excess Insurance we will return the money to you. 

What types are there?

There are two main types of Excess Insurance:

Single policy: This covers the excess on one insurance policy, for example your car or home insurance.

Lifestyle policy: This covers the excess on several different policies, for example your car, home and health policies combined.

How much does it cost?

The cost of excess protection always differs between insurers and will depend on things such as the amount of excess covered. If you have an excess of £200 on your policy, you will pay less for excess protection compared to if your excess was, for example, £500. Most insurers will start excess protection from as little as £2 per month.

Is it worth the cost?

Is excess protection worth the money? This really depends on how high your excess is compared to the price of Excess Insurance.

If the amount of excess is little, or near the amount you would pay for the Excess Insurance, then you’re not going to save money. The best thing is to get a quote and find out how much you would pay for Excess Insurance. If your excess is less than the price of Excess Insurance, it is not worthwhile. However, most Excess Insurance should be significantly cheaper than your excess - this is when it will be worthwhile.

Do you need it?

Excess insurance can benefit you if you have an insurance policy with an excess; for a small amount of money you can save yourself a large amount.

Excess insurance is especially good if you are hiring a car. Most car hire companies will make you pay a large amount of excess, sometimes up to £1000. If the car is damaged during your hire you will have to pay the excess. Excess Insurance can save you from paying this large amount.

Here at Smart-Sure we offer excess insurance from just 6p per day. You can protect an excess worth £1000 for just £100 per annum, saving you a whopping £900 in the long run should you make a claim. Get a quote today. https://smart-sure.com/excess-protect-insurance/.

While iPhones and most technology is developing every day, not all features are keeping up with our needs, for example the limited storage space. Whether you use your smartphone for photography, apps, music or just calls, when it comes to storage space, you’re likely to have hit a breaking point at least once in your life. There are many ways to get hold of more available storage on your phone, such as buying a higher spec iPhone with more memory, but this is quite an expensive option, and nobody wants to pay more money by buying a phone just for extra storage.

Delete what’s taking up the most space

The first step is finding out what exactly is taking up the most space. Go to settings > storage > iCloud usage > manage storage, here you should be able to see a list, of every app in order and just how much space they are taking.

You should be able to use this information in the storage usage section to guide you through your iPhone. Think about what apps you prioritise and what apps you haven’t used recently. For example, if an app you downloaded last summer is taking a lot of space and you haven’t used it in over a month, its probably not important to you, so think do you really need it? If you do delete it, remember you can re download it again whenever you like.

Delete Apps you have only used once

When you have looked through all the apps, there will be at least one app that you forgot was even on your phone and you probably haven’t used it since you first downloaded it. So be brutal and just delete it. By deleting a few apps, you can free up to 500MB.

Even if it’s an app you’ve paid for, your details will have been saved, so you can still download them at any time, free of charge.

Back up your most important photos

Don’t keep your double saved photos

If you don’t want to back up your photos and videos to somewhere like Dropbox, then I would recommend going through your gallery and deleting photos/videos that may have been duplicated, for example if someone has sent you a photo multiple times. Photos and videos that you don’t need anymore can be deleted, for example when you screenshotted a pair of shoes you wanted, and you bought them, you no longer need the screenshot right? Deleting photos, you don’t want, or need is one of the easiest ways to free space as photos can hold the most storage and you’re not losing anything by deleting them. 

Stop storing text messages

Deleting conversations such as text messages or WhatsApp messages is a very good way to up your storage. When you take time to look you realise how many messages are on your phone. If you have conversations from over two months ago, or if you sent a lot of images on a text, then it will be hogging a lot of space. For example, you text your boyfriend all day every day on WhatsApp, you’re going to have a chat that starts from a few months ago and is still present, chances are you don’t need those 400 messages, or the photos either as they are already on your gallery, so deleting your conversations is a good option.

Deleting old playlists

All of those songs you start to download soon add up, and unfortunately music takes up a lot of space. So, deleting songs that you don’t listen to anymore, or even playlists that you made a long time ago can help you earn back your storage space.

How we help

Don’t forget here at Smart-Sure we offer iPhone insurance! We use trusted engineers in many locations, meaning when you need help you are closer than you think to a helping hand.

Contact us via our website or call us on 03333 449 669 if you would like to find out more, our customer service team will be happy to help with any questions or queries.