When I agreed to rent the flat that we just moved into yesterday, the tenant(who we are subletting from) asked if we would like to rent his car for the 8 months at a very good monthly rate. We didnt say yes or no but spoke about it yesterday when we met for the first time. I never really thought about insurance but he is going to call his insurance company on monday to see how much it will cost for me. I'm worried that it is going to be too much and make it not worthwhile for me. I want to suggest to him that we do what I've done in Canada, where I just moved from, and Malta, where I'm from......where I would just be added to his insurance as an occassional driver. He doesn't really know what he's doing and I'm worried the insurance company are going to charge me as much as they can.
Any advice.....please?

Well, normally it's the car that's insured in switzerland, as opposed to the UK and other countries where it's the driver that gets insured. I know there's a bit more to it than that but essentially you should be able to drive the car on the existing insurance.

Hi, geryshaw If you were very occasional driver than third part liability insurance will do. The costs are CHF 175.00 a whole year only. If you will drive his car regularly than the kind of insurance will not pay in case of damage of his car. And after all you do not need to take insurance of your own. Just put your name as a mainly driver in his insurance policy. (That thing should do the car owner not you. You will be not allowed to.) And after doing that compare if you shold insure comprehensive part of car insurance or not. In any case you could pay the comprehensive part of car insurance yourself and that could be te solution to it. Important: the third part liability insurance will not pay if it will have known that you drived the car regular or more times already. This cover driving car of others is in whole Switzerland in all of insurance covered not very good. Arek Kasprowski 06.01.2008

Thanks. I hope it's as simple as that.

You were right. The car is insured so we made a deal that since I'm going to be using the car for 8 months then I will pay 1/3 of the insurance, which wasnt much. Thanks for the advice

but is not 100 % correct unfortunately... why? the answer: the insurance premium has been calculated for one another person The other person has different experience by driving car as you have. The other person has perhaps different other items of her dates as you have. The other person = car owner and insurance payer is an another kind of risk. Cause of that is not 100% correct that you drive that car continuously, regularly and everyday. Insurance company can say: NO! We are not paying! Arek Kasprowski

As I understand you cover the driver who is useing the car 60% of the time. If the other person is not around then I think it would be a problem to prove that you are only the minor driver.

DC