Insurance Excess Loans

Your car's up on the hoist, the repairer has quoted the job, and now they're telling you plainly: work doesn't start until the excess lands. That's the moment this page is written for, not the general theory of what an insurance excess is. Here's what to ask your insurer before you do anything else, what excesses actually cost, and where Pay Advance or a Personal Loan genuinely fits if you still need to cover the gap yourself.

Ask your insurer before you look at a loan

This is the part most pages skip, and it's the most useful thing on this one. Insurers don't advertise instalments for an excess, but that doesn't mean the only options are pay it all now or don't get your car fixed.

• You can ask for a repayment arrangement. The Financial Rights Legal Centre confirms you're entitled to request one, or to ask for a cash settlement where the excess is simply deducted from the payout instead of being paid upfront.
• An insurer generally can't refuse to proceed just because you can't pay the excess up front. The Australian Financial Complaints Authority (AFCA) has stated that an insurer cannot automatically decline a claim on that basis alone, where the claim would otherwise be covered. AFCA documents a real case where an insurer agreed to repair a customer's car while the customer repaid a $2,000 excess at $100 a month.
• If your car is written off, the excess is commonly deducted from the final settlement figure rather than collected upfront, so there may be nothing to find in cash at all.
• Tell your insurer if you're in financial hardship. The Insurance Council of Australia says to raise it as soon as possible, and the General Insurance Code of Practice requires every insurer to publish the hardship support it offers.

If you want help working through any of this, the National Debt Helpline (1800 007 007) and the Financial Rights Legal Centre's insurance law service are free. Ask the question before you assume a loan is the only path. If your insurer confirms there's genuinely no arrangement available, or the amount involved is bigger than a repayment plan will comfortably cover, the rest of this page is for that situation.

How much is car insurance excess in Australia?

There's no single number, because excess is set by your policy, your state and your insurer, but the ranges are consistent across sources. A standard comprehensive car excess typically runs $400 to $1,000 (source: Forbes Advisor). Canstar's state benchmarks put it at $1,000 in NSW and the ACT, $900 in Victoria and Queensland, and $800 in South Australia, WA, Tasmania and the NT. At the high end, some flexible-excess options run to roughly $1,550 (AAMI flexi-excess).

Excess isn't only a car insurance thing. Home and contents policies typically let you select a basic excess anywhere from $300 to $5,000. Health insurance works differently again: common voluntary excess tiers are $250, $500 and $750 per hospital admission, capped by law at $750 a year for singles and $1,500 for couples and families, charged once per adult per calendar year. If it's the repair bill itself rather than the excess that's the problem, see car repair loans. If it's a health excess or gap payment, see medical expense loans, and for a home excess alongside repair costs, see home repair loans.

Why excesses stack: young drivers, unlisted drivers and multiple claims

A standard excess is only the base figure. Most policies add extra excesses on top in specific situations, and they stack rather than replace each other.

• Age or inexperienced-driver excess. If the driver at fault is under 25, or newly licensed, insurers commonly add $500 to $800 on top of the standard excess. Mozo's research puts a young at-fault driver's total excess at roughly $1,300 to $1,800 once both amounts are combined.
• Unlisted driver excess. If the person driving wasn't named on the policy, the excess can jump a lot further. Mozo cites an example where one insurer charges $3,000 for an unlisted driver against $800 for a listed one, a gap that changes which Beforepay product even makes sense.
• Multiple or compounding excesses. Some claims trigger more than one excess type at once, for instance a windscreen excess alongside a standard excess, or an at-fault excess alongside an unlisted driver excess.

The exact amounts and combinations sit in your own Product Disclosure Statement (PDS), so it's worth checking that document, or asking your insurer directly, before you assume which figure applies to your claim.

Not at fault? You might still pay the excess upfront

A common assumption is that you only pay an excess if you were at fault. That's not reliably true. Moneysmart's own worked example shows an excess still being charged where the at-fault driver couldn't be identified, for instance a hit-and-run or a car park scrape with no witness. And even where the other driver is identified and the insurer accepts they're liable, the excess is often still collected from you upfront, then refunded once your insurer successfully recovers the cost from the other side, which can take anywhere from a few weeks to several months. If that refund timeline is the actual problem, that's a cash flow gap, not a genuine cost, which matters for deciding how much you actually need to borrow and for how long.

Pay Advance or Personal Loan for an insurance excess

A standard excess of $400 to $1,000 sits comfortably inside a Pay Advance: borrow $50 to $2,000, repaid in up to 4 instalments aligned to your pay cycle, over a maximum term of 62 days. That's the product built for this exact job, and it covers the large majority of excess situations on its own.

Personal Loan only becomes relevant once excesses stack past $2,000, which by Beforepay's own estimate happens in roughly 10 to 20% of cases: a young or inexperienced-driver excess added to a standard one, an unlisted driver excess, or a family health excess landing alongside other costs at the same time. In those genuinely larger cases, a Beforepay Personal Loan covers $2,001 to $5,000 over a term of 3 to 12 months. Both products share a fixed 5% setup fee, interest of up to 24% p.a., no late fees, no early repayment fees, and no traditional credit check. Approval is typically decided in under 60 seconds, and approved funds can land in as little as 5 minutes, though transfer times can depend on your bank. You can hold only one active Beforepay loan at a time, so check the eligibility criteria first: 18 or over, an Australian resident, employed with a regular wage, less than 51% of total income from Centrelink, and valid Australian ID.

The excess, the fee and the maths

Take a standard $800 car excess on a Pay Advance. The setup fee is a fixed 5% of the amount borrowed, so 5% of $800 is $40, plus interest of up to 24% p.a. calculated on the amount and the time it's outstanding, spread across your instalments. There's no late fee if a payment slips and no penalty for clearing it early. If the total climbs higher, say a $1,600 combined excess after an unlisted driver charge, the same 5% setup fee applies to whatever amount you actually borrow, so it's worth confirming the real number with your insurer before you apply rather than borrowing a round figure.

If you're still working out the total cost

An excess rarely turns up completely alone. If the repair bill itself, beyond the excess, is also tight before payday, car repair loans covers that side of it. If it's a hospital admission excess or a gap payment, medical expense loans is the closer fit, and a home excess alongside a repair job belongs on home repair loans. Whichever one applies, get the exact figure from your insurer or your PDS before deciding how much to borrow, since interest accrues on the amount outstanding and the time it's outstanding, so borrowing the real number rather than a guess keeps the cost down.

This page is factual information only, not financial advice and not insurance advice. Excess amounts, hardship policies and repayment options vary by insurer and by policy, so always check your own Product Disclosure Statement or speak to your insurer directly for the figure and options that apply to your claim.