Scratch and Dent insurance For Private Vehicles

Also known as "Scratch and Dent" and "SMART" Cover, it provides a payment to you to help cover the cost of repairs to minor scratches and dents to your vehicle’s bodywork.

It costs around £90-150 to repair a single minor scratch and often significantly more for small dents. Whether it’s worth it to you depends on many factors, including if you hope to resell or trade in your car one day. With our policy, you can choose either no excess or a low excess, making repairing minor damage to your car’s bodywork less painful than if you didn’t have Scratch and Dent Insurance.

You pay the first £15 of each claim unless you have taken out our no-excess Scratch and Dent cover.

You can make up to three claims with a one-year policy, six with a two-year policy and nine with a three-year policy and you must use one of our authorised SMART repairers. However, only three claims are allowed per year with the claims limit recommencing at each anniversary of the start date, subject to the duration of cover purchased.

You’ll need to check your own policy because they all vary. But even if you have an existing policy that does cover them, for smaller scratches and dents, you might find that your policy’s excess is more than the price of a repair. With Scratch and Dent Insurance, the excess is either £0 or low, depending on your choice, so you won’t be significantly out of pocket if you choose to get minor bodywork damage repaired, as long as it’s in line with your policy terms and conditions.

In most cases, no, although it depends on your definition of custom. We don’t cover self-healing paint, chrome illusion paint, two-tone paint, vinyl wrap or matte finishes. For other types of non-standard paintwork, check with us.

In many cases, yes - as long as the scratch isn’t more than 300mm long or wide, and 3mm deep, and the car’s original metal bodywork hasn’t been exposed. Read the policy details for exact information, but minor scratches are usually covered.

If the scratch goes all the way through the paint to the metal, it’s not covered. We only cover scratches up to 3mm deep where the car’s original metalwork isn’t exposed. For full terms, including the types of scratches and dents that are covered, see the policy documents.

Unfortunately, our policy doesn’t cover any damage to roofs.

Not with this policy, but we have a policy that does cover alloy wheels. Check out our Tyre and Alloy Wheel Insurance here.

Our approved repairers use SMART (Small to Medium Area Repair Technology), which is much faster than traditional methods. Using specialised tools, SMART repairers can fix small scratches and dents quickly, so there’s no need for you to leave your car in the bodyshop for days or weeks. In most cases, SMART repairs can be completed within 24 hours - often less.

For our policy, you must use one of our approved repairers, and they all use SMART. We don’t cover scratches and dents that our approved repairers feel cannot be fixed using SMART. The good news is that most minor scratches and dents of less than 300mm length, and less than 3mm deep, can be fixed with SMART.

In this case, you’ll typically claim on your standard motor insurance policy or the other vehicle’s motor insurance policy. Because of that, we don’t cover scratches and dents caused by car accidents, no matter how minor.

You need to check the terms and conditions of your motor insurance policy, to find out your motor insurer's rules around this.