My Motor Insurance Policy provides New-For-Old cover during the first 12 months - why do I need GAP Insurance?
For brand new vehicles, many Motor Insurance policies will indeed replace your vehicle on a New-For-Old basis if the vehicle is written off during the first 12 months of ownership.
To some extent this negates the requirement for GAP Insurance during the same term, however at the end of that 12 month period, your Motor Insurance policy New-For-Old scheme would come to an end and you would not be able to take out either an Invoice or Replacement GAP Insurance policy, which must be purchased within 105 days of the date of purchasing the vehicle or (in the case of Replacement GAP) the date the vehicle was first registered - whichever is the earlier.
Relying therefore on only your Motor Insurance policy New-For-Old scheme might provide you with cover for that 12 month period, but what about the 2nd, 3rd or even 4th year as the vehicle has depreciated even further and it's your own finances at stake?
This is why you need GAP Insurance even if you have New-For-Old cover as part of your Motor Insurance policy.
Update: UK Online Exclusive.
If you have New-For-Old cover as part of your motor insurance policy for the first 12 months, you can now defer the start date of our Invoice or Replacement GAP Insurance policies to be the day after your vehicle is 12 months old.
In real terms this means that, whilst you still have to buy our policy within 105 days of you buying the vehicle (or, in the case of Replacement GAP Insurance, the date of first registration), unlike all other GAP Insurance policies available online which start immediately even though there's almost no chance of you claiming on it during that first 12 months period, our policies can be configured to start when your New-For-Old cover expires.
For example, you purchase a brand new vehicle, first registered on 01/03/2009. Your motor insurance company covers you on a New-For-Old basis for the next 12 months... you can now specify that our Invoice or Replacement GAP Insurance policies should start on 02/03/2010.
What's more, we don't charge for the option to defer, this means that a three year GAP Insurance policy deferred by 12 months, indirectly, and at no extra cost, covers up to 4 years of your vehicle value depreciating!
Alternatively it means that you could save even more money on the cost of your GAP Insurance policy, because if you're sure that you only want say, three years of cover in total, you could buy our lower cost 2 year policy, defer it by 12 months, and indirectly still cover up to 3 years of your vehicle value depreciating.