In contrast to liability insurance, buying partial casco insurance (comprehensive insurance) is optional. This insurance covers damage to your own car, including the following risks, which may be combined in various ways, depending on the insurance company:
- Theft: theft of vehicle, including damage to the vehicle due to attempted theft. Your risk depends on where you usually park your vehicle (e.g. in a garage, private or public parking spot).
- Damage due to natural hazards: damage to the vehicle caused by forces of nature such as stormy winds, avalanches, hailstorms, landslides, rockfall, high water, floods and snow loads.
- Fire: damage to your own vehicle caused by fire, lightning, explosions or short-circuits.
- Glass (breakage): damage to windows, sometimes other parts made of glass or a glass-like substitute.
- Collision with animals: damage to your vehicle resulting from a collision with an animal, e.g. a deer.
- Acts of vandalism: if someone intentionally breaks off your car's aerial, windscreen wipers or wing mirrors, punctures your tyres or pollutes the contents of the tank, the insurance covers the cost of repair.
- Marten: damage to the vehicle caused by marten.
- Personal effects: stolen or damaged luggage that needs to be repaired or replaced following a damage event insured through casco insurance. This does not include valuables.
The combination of partial casco and collision insurance is often called full casco insurance.
Tip:
Since repair costs such as replacing the windscreen do not necessarily decrease with increasing vehicle age, it may well be worth buying partial casco insurance for older cars, too.