Someone scratched the van door in the car park. Should the company report it to the casco cover – or settle it from its own budget? The question comes up in every fleet, and there's no universal answer: there's a calculation. This article sets out both sides of the dilemma honestly – and the decision rule worth fixing in advance.
- Every reported casco claim weighs on the claims record – lots of small reports come back to you in the premium over the longer term.
- At the same time, insurance exists precisely to pay out – claiming for damage above the deductible is entirely legitimate.
- You need the decision rule in advance: below what claim size the company settles from its own budget, who decides, and how it's documented.
- An MTPL claim (damage caused to someone else) is a different matter altogether: there, the injured party's claim runs its course, and reporting it isn't a judgement call.
The dilemma, plainly
The direct benefit of a casco claim is the payout (above the deductible); the indirect cost is a worse claims record: every payment counts towards the loss ratio, and a persistently high number of small claims comes back at renewal review. With a low deductible, the maths is often genuinely deceptive: the payout on a small claim is barely more than the deductible, yet its statistical footprint counts in full. That's why, over the longer term, a “report everything” routine can end up costing a fleet more than the payouts are worth.
The other side: what is insurance actually for?
Honesty also means acknowledging that insurance isn't meant to be something you never use. For medium and large claims, paying out is exactly the insurer's job – there, reporting isn't a judgement call, it's the whole point of the cover. The dilemma only exists in the small-claims band; and where that band ends differs fleet by fleet, depending on the deductible level, claims frequency, and the company's own reserves. One important distinction: an MTPL claim – damage the company's vehicle causes to someone else – doesn't belong here at all: there, the injured party's claim runs its course under the statutory scheme, and it isn't something the company “settles in-house”.
The maths and the house rule
A good decision needs two numbers from the claims record: how many small claims occur each year, and how large they are on average. This shows where it pays to draw the line – and that line becomes the internal rule: below what amount the company settles from its own budget, who approves it, and how it's documented (the claim should still be photographed and logged even if it doesn't go to the insurer – the fleet also learns its own claims pattern from it). This house rule is the twin of your deductible policy: it's worth setting the two together, and I'm happy to help work them out on request.
What not to do
There are two bad extremes. One is the reflexive “we report everything” – a slow erosion of the claims record. The other is “we report nothing” – which leads to the company hollowing out its own cover, and starting to hesitate even over genuine claims. The goal is a deliberate middle path: a limit fixed in advance, documented decisions, reviewed annually. That way, small claims stop being an argument at every fender-bender and become routine instead – just like every other part of the fleet system.
A sample house rule you can copy
The outline of a proven internal rule – the company's own claims pattern fills in the numbers: claims below and close to the deductible are settled from the company's own budget, with the decision made by the fleet manager [up to a value threshold], and by [a manager] above it; every claim – whether reported or settled internally – is logged in the claims register with a photo and a short description; and the rule is reviewed annually, as part of the renewal cycle, based on the latest claims record. The key sentence is the second one: a claim settled from the company's own budget still needs to be documented. The fleet learns from its own claims pattern – and exactly this data is what the next deductible decision will need.
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