How to Make Car Insurance Claims Effectively? | A Step-by-Step Guide 

You must have mandatorily bought an insurance policy from one of the car insurance companies while purchasing your car. However, it is important to know how to car insurance claims in case of any unfortunate accidents or incidents that can potentially damage your car. This will help you avoid bearing the entire repairing cost by yourself. Instead, the insurance company will pay for it partially or completely depending upon the terms and conditions mentioned in your policy.

To put it simply, an insurance claim is an official request that you, as a policyholder make to the insurer (insurance company) for compensating the damages to your car. The amount of compensation will depend upon the coverage of your insurance policy. In this blog post, we will provide a step-by-step guide on how to make an insurance claim. 

First and foremost, insurance claims are of two distinct types – cashless claims and reimbursement claims. For the former, the insurance company pays the repair costs directly to the garage or workshop. However, in the case of reimbursement claims, you need to pay the repair costs up front to the garage or workshop, which is then reimbursed to you by the insurance company. This generally happens when the garage or workshop is not a recognized partner of the insurance company. 

Now that you have a basic idea of how insurance claims work, let us give you a brief overview of how to make insurance claims effectively. 

You will need the following documents to make an insurance claim: 

• A photocopy of the insurance policy document
• A photocopy of the driver’s license
• A photocopy of your car’s registration certificate 
• An estimate of the repairing costs
• Original receipts of the overall cost incurred
• A photocopy of the FIR (if applicable)

Also Read: What Happens When You Don’t Service Your Car AC?

Now, let us look a the step-by-step guide on how to make a car insurance claim. 

Step 1: Inform your insurance company about the accident/incident in detail. Fill up the insurance claim form available on the company’s website and submit all the relevant documents, as required. 

Step 2: Take your car to a workshop or garage, preferably the one which is a recognized partner of your insurance company

Step 3: The insurance company will send a surveyor to the garage. The surveyor will inspect the magnitude of the damages and prepare a report. Once this is done and you receive a copy of the surveyor’s report, instruct the garage or workshop to start repairing your car. 

Step 4: Once the garage or workshop completes the repair work, send all the receipts and invoices to the surveyor who will then pass those on to the insurance company. 

Step 5: The insurance company will then perform due diligence before sending a Delivery Order to the garage or workshop. You can then collect your car. This will be the case if the insurer is offering a cashless insurance claim to you. However, in case of a reimbursement insurance claim, you will have to make the payment yourself and the insurance company will reimburse the amount (partially or completely) as per the terms and conditions of your policy. 

This was a step-by-step ideal guide on how to make car insurance claims. However, the process can be quite tricky at times, requiring you to run back and forth between the workshop and the insurance company. You might want to choose a recognized workshop that is affiliated with prominent insurance companies to expedite the entire process. 

Fixcraft, India’s first multi-brand car workshop, and maintenance management company offers end-to-end assistance for car insurance claims. It has a proven track record of delivering top-notch insurance claim services to customers across the country.