Temporary car insurance

Temporary car insurance is a shorter car insurance policy that usually lasts between an hour and month.

There are lots of reasons you might need temporary car insurance. You can use it for borrowing a car, test driving, or getting a new car home before you have time to sort out a full insurance policy.

You can use temporary car insurance on a car that already has a full car insurance policy. (Although, with Cuvva, the car doesn't have to have an underlying policy.)

It's a quicker (and usually cheaper) way to get car sharing insurance than adding a named driver. And it's more flexible than taking out a full car insurance policy.

No. As long as your short-term car insurance is active, you don't need to have an underlying policy.

That makes Cuvva perfect for test driving cars, or driving new cars home before you sort out a full insurance policy.

Just make sure you don't forget to insure the car once your short-term policy runs out. In the UK, cars always need to be insured, not just when you're driving them.

(It's all thanks to a very boring but important law called Continuous Insurance Enforcement.)

You can use our short-term car insurance to drive in the EU. But the level of cover is much lower.

In the UK, our policies are all fully comprehensive. Outside the UK, your insurance is less than third party. That means it wouldn't cover you for any damage to your own vehicle.

Cuvva policies don't insure you for driving outside the EU.

And although you can use Cuvva abroad once you've bought your policy, you have to be in Great Britain when you buy your policy.

This is because location data doesn't work in other countries, and your location is one of the things we use to work out the price of your policy.

To get temporary car insurance with Cuvva, you have to be aged between 19 and 65.

And if you're younger than 21, you need to have held a full licence for at least a year, with no at-fault insurance claims.

With Cuvva, you can get short-term car insurance for hours, days, weeks or even a month. Policies start from as little as one hour, and they go all the way up to 28 days.

And if you need to extend for a couple of hours, you can do that too. Just go into the app, tap on your policy, and choose how much longer you'd like to be covered for.

You can extend your policy as soon as you're a quarter of the way through your original one. That means, if you’d bought a 1 hour car insurance policy, you could extend it after 15 minutes.

Cars have to be worth more than £1 and less than £40,000. And they can't be:

• Older than 20 years
• Modified
• Scrapped
• Impounded

Vans have to be valued between £1 and £20,000. And they have to be in an insurance group lower than 20.

Those are the main things to look out for. But there might be a few other restrictions from time to time set by our underwriters.

To double-check we can cover you, it's best to get a quote in the app, or get an estimate on our website.

Like your price, we use lots of different bits of information to work out your excess.

There are two kinds of excess: compulsory and voluntary.

We only offer compulsory excess on our short-term car insurance policies. The amount changes depending on the person buying the policy.

We take a lot of different things into account when we work out your excess, including:

• Your age. Younger drivers tend to have a higher excess than older, more experienced drivers.
• The vehicle you're driving. Faster, more expensive cars tend to come with a higher excess.
• Your location when you start the policy. If you're based in an area where there are lots of incidents, your excess will go up a little.

We don't offer voluntary excess, and you can't adjust the compulsory excess. But it's always shown clearly in the app before you buy a policy.

Yes. Short-term car insurance is designed for car sharing.

And when you do borrow your friend's car and get covered with a temporary policy, it won't affect the owner's insurance at all.

Even if you went and crashed the car, or had to make a claim, it wouldn't increase their price when they renewed their car insurance.

And it wouldn't affect their no-claims bonus, if they have one.

But it's worth letting the owner know exactly what you're covered for. That way, if you do have to make a claim, they'll know exactly what damage is covered.

You can do that by sending them a copy of your policy documents. You can find them in the app. We'll email you a copy, too.

(And make sure you get the owner’s permission before you borrow it. But we’d hope that goes without saying.)

Cuvva is the broker, not the underwriter. And that means you'll have to get in touch with the underwriter if you need to make a claim.

But you can be sure that all of our short-term car insurance policies are fully comprehensive (which means you're covered for damage to your car and the other person's), and you're covered for up to £40,000.

If you do need to make a claim, it won't affect the owner's insurance, because it's a completely separate policy. It won't make their price go up when they renew their insurance.

But if the car needs repairs, it could leave them without a car for a bit. And, because we don't offer uninsured loss recovery, we won't be able to help them out with any costs they run into because of your claim.

Our temporary car insurance includes class 1 business use as standard. That means you're covered for commuting, and driving to the odd business meeting.

Which isn't always the case in the world of short-term car insurance. Most temporary policies don't cover you for business driving.

Most of them only cover you for what's known as “social, domestic and pleasure” use.

But our policies don't cover other people driving your car for business, and they don't cover delivery driving.

When you buy a car insurance policy, it's added to the Motor Insurance Database (MID). You can check the MID to make sure your car's insured, and the police can also use it to check that your car's insured.

But the MID can take a little while to update. When you buy temporary car insurance, the MID doesn't always get updated by the time you're on the road.

We send your policy to the MID as quickly as possible, but sometimes it just doesn't update quickly enough.

But don't worry. Even if your temporary car insurance isn't showing up in the MID, it's still legal and valid. As long as you've got your policy documents, you'll be good to go.

You can find them in the app. We'll also email you a copy when you buy your policy.

Yes, you can tax a car with temporary car insurance.

In the UK, you can’t tax a car without having it insured. And a temporary car insurance policy is a good way to get short-term cover so you can sort out tax. Even if the policy only lasts for an hour.

Just make sure you keep the car insured once your short-term policy runs out. Without car insurance, your tax isn't valid.

When you get your car taxed, the DVLA will check the Motor Insurance Database (MID) to check that your car is covered.

But sometimes the MID can be slow to update, so your temporary policy might not show up on time.

If that happens, just show them your policy docs. You can get them in the app. We'll email you a copy, too.