As consumers, you may notice car insurance companies go on about offering step back no claims bonus protection as a benefit in their ads. There’s no denying it sounds great, but what exactly is it?

Earlier, we discussed about how a No Claims Bonus (NCB) works and how building one up saves you money as a driver. The good thing for you is that you can protect your hard-earned NCB even if a claim is made against you for an accident that was your fault. Basically, there two types of NCB protection: step back and full. Today, we’re going to talk about step back no claims bonus protection.

So, what exactly is step back bonus protection?

Having step back protection on your car policy will prevent you from losing all of your No Claims Bonus if you have to make a claim or if another driver makes a claim against you. If you had no protection and had to claim, you would lose all of your NCB that you had earned over the years. But with step back protection, the amount of no claims would ‘step back’ to a lower percentage.

The amount that is lost depends on the insurance company that you are with. Most insurers would have a ‘step back’ rate of 30% (or 3 years lost) on a no claims discount while others apply a lower deduction of just 20% (or 2 years lost). To give a simple example: let’s say you worked up a no claims discount of 50% and you had the misfortune of having to make a claim. Depending on your insurer, your no claims discount could drop to as low as 20% after the claim has been settled.

While you would still have to pay more when your insurance is up for renewal, having step back bonus protection prevents you from losing all of your no claims discount which would have resulted in paying even more again for cover. And it’s for this reason why we recommend that you have this on your car insurance policy at a minimum. The good news, though, is that step back bonus protection is normally offered as standard on most insurers’ fully comprehensive policies.