• By Raymond Momanyi

How to Choose the Best Motor Insurance in Kenya

Every vehicle used on a Kenyan public road must carry at least third-party insurance. That is the legal floor, not a full safety net. The Insurance (Motor Vehicle Third Party Risks) Act exists to protect other people if you cause injury, death or property damage. It does not automatically repair your own car, replace it after theft, or pay for a fire. Choosing well means matching the cover to the car’s value, how you use it, and what you could afford to lose if the vehicle disappeared tomorrow.

There are three standard products. They are not rival brands. They are three levels of protection, and the premium rises as more of your risk moves onto the insurer.

Third-party only: legal, narrow, and silent on your own car

Third-party only, often called TPO, is the cheapest and most limited option. It responds when you injure someone else or damage their property — another vehicle, a shopfront, a fence. It does not pay for collision damage to your own car, theft, fire, floods, a cracked windscreen, or towing after you have written the vehicle off.

That makes TPO a compliance product. It keeps you on the right side of the Traffic Act. It is a rational choice only when the car is old, low in market value, and you would not spend serious money repairing it after a serious accident. If the vehicle is financed, or replacing it would empty your savings, TPO leaves a hole the size of the car.

Indicative private-car third-party premiums often sit in a relatively flat band rather than scaling with market value — commonly a few thousand shillings a year for ordinary saloons, with engine size and underwriter still moving the number. Treat those figures as a market range, not a quote.

Third-party fire and theft: the middle product many owners skip

Third-party fire and theft, or TPFT, keeps everything TPO covers and then adds two of the ugliest total-loss risks in Kenyan towns: the car being stolen, and the car being damaged or destroyed by fire.

What it still will not do is pay for ordinary accident damage to your own vehicle. If you hit another car, a kerb, or a flooded stretch of road, TPFT behaves like TPO as far as your own repairs are concerned.

TPFT suits owners who still have meaningful residual value in the car, park in theft-prone areas, or cannot sleep over arson and electrical fires, but who do not want to pay comprehensive rates for collision cover. It is the compromise product. Use it deliberately, not because a sales desk bundled it without explanation.

Comprehensive: your car, other people, and the extras that actually get used

Comprehensive includes third-party liability plus fire, theft and accidental damage to the insured vehicle, subject to the policy wording, excess and valuation. If the smash is your fault, the insurer can still repair or write off your car. That is the point of the extra premium.

This is the cover banks and asset financiers almost always demand on a financed vehicle. It is also where add-ons usually live: windscreen, towing and recovery, courtesy car or loss of use, excess protector, political violence, passenger medical, and sometimes flood or special-perils wording that is weak or absent on TPO and TPFT.

Comprehensive is priced as a percentage of current market value, not as a flat fee. In the Kenyan private-car market that percentage commonly lands somewhere around 3% to 7%, with SUVs, older units, high-theft models, loaded claims histories and commercial or PSV use pushing the rate up. A car valued at KSh 1.2 million and a car valued at KSh 400,000 are not in the same conversation.

Comprehensive is not automatically “the best” for every owner. On a very cheap, ageing hatchback the annual premium can start to look large relative to what the insurer would ever pay. On a new or financed car, it is usually the only product that matches the financial exposure.

What actually drives the premium

Underwriters are not pricing the badge on the grille. They are pricing how expensive you are likely to become.

Vehicle value does the heaviest lifting on comprehensive and TPFT. The sum insured should track current market value, not the price you paid years ago and not an inflated figure you hope to recover. Over-insurance raises the premium without raising the payout. Under-insurance can reduce a claim through averaging. A current valuation at inception and at renewal is not paperwork theatre.

Age works in two directions. Older cars are treated as more likely to fail and, past a point, many underwriters cap or load comprehensive — often around fifteen years for private cars, with referral or higher rates beyond that. A young or newly licensed driver can attract extra premium on the same vehicle.

Usage class is where people quietly buy the wrong policy. Private social and domestic use is the cheapest pool. Commercial use — deliveries, staff ferrying, goods for trade — costs more because mileage and exposure rise. Declaring private use while running the car as a taxi or cargo vehicle is a claims problem. If the use on the schedule is wrong, the insurer can decline the claim.

PSV versus private is a different market, not a small surcharge. Matatus, buses, taxis and ride-hailing cars used for hire and reward carry passengers for fare, run longer hours, and generate more frequent and more expensive claims. Passenger liability rules are stricter, minimum premiums are higher, and some underwriters simply do not want the class. A private comprehensive quotation is not a PSV quotation. Do not force one into the other.

Make and model, engine capacity, where the car sleeps at night, tracking devices, no-claim bonus and optional extras still move the price. They matter. They matter less than getting value, age and use class right first.

Why walking into one insurer is usually the expensive route

A single company’s rate looks decisive until you see the second and third quotes. Underwriters do not share one price list. They differ on appetite for certain models and ages, excess structures, garage panels, security warranties and exclusions. One insurer can be sharp on a private 1500cc saloon and uncompetitive on a ten-year-old SUV. Another may decline PSV or load high-theft cars. You only see that spread if someone places several quotations side by side.

A licensed broker works for the client, not for one underwriter. You give the vehicle details once. The broker compares cover and price across multiple IRA-licensed insurers, flags awkward excesses and exclusions, and helps you buy the product that actually matches how the car is used. That is usually cheaper than taking the first offer, and it is almost always faster than visiting three offices with a logbook photocopy.

Imana Insurance Agency is an example of that model: an IRA-regulated intermediary that sources motor quotations from several underwriters rather than locking you to a single brand. The usual path is straightforward. You share an ID or passport, KRA PIN and logbook. You receive comparable quotes. You pay by M-Pesa or bank transfer. You get a digital certificate the same day — commonly within about fifteen to thirty minutes during business hours — instead of waiting on a paper document. Published starting points on their channels have included private third-party from around KSh 4,560 a year and comprehensive from roughly 3% to 6% of vehicle value, subject to underwriting. Those are starting points, not guarantees. The point of the broker is the comparison, not a single printed rate.

Same-day digital issuance is a convenience, not a substitute for reading the policy. It matters when cover has lapsed, a financier wants proof today, or you need a valid certificate for the road. The lasting value is still the multi-underwriter quote and someone who will still pick up the phone when an assessor is arguing about a bumper.

Three tests before you pick the insurer

Once the cover type is right, choose the company that will still be useful after the accident. A couple of thousand shillings on the quotation is a poor reason to ignore the next three checks.

Claim settlement reputation comes first. Motor is a high-claims class in Kenya. Industry figures have shown heavy claims pressure and, for some liability files, long settlement times when documents are incomplete. Ask what happens after a smash: how soon you must notify, whether repairs go through approved garages, when cash-in-lieu is offered, how total loss is valued, and how long a straightforward own-damage claim typically takes. A cheap policy that fights every windscreen or delays every repair authority is not cheap. Look at how the insurer behaves after a loss, not only how it advertises before one.

IRA licensing status is non-negotiable. Deal only with insurers, brokers and agents on the current Insurance Regulatory Authority register. The Authority gazettes licensed players under the Insurance Act. An unlicensed seller can collect premium and leave you with a certificate that will not stand when it is tested. Confirm the underwriter and the intermediary. A broker should be able to show its IRA status; you can also check the regulator’s published lists.

Policy transparency is the third test. Before you pay, you should be able to explain, in ordinary language, the sum insured and valuation basis; the excess, including extra excesses for young drivers or certain claims; excluded uses; any tracker, alarm or overnight-parking warranty; territorial limits; and what is left out unless you add it — floods, political violence, windscreen, tyres, your own medical costs. If the quotation cannot make those items clear, keep shopping.

A clean way to decide

Start with the car’s economics, not the brochure.

If the vehicle is financed, new, or a loss you could not absorb, buy comprehensive. If it still has real market value and theft or fire worries you more than collision repairs, look hard at third-party fire and theft. If the car is old and cheap enough that you would not repair it after a serious accident, third-party only can be enough — provided you treat the vehicle as self-insured for everything else.

Then compare more than one underwriter through a licensed broker like Imana Insurance Agency Kenya Ltd so price, excess and claims practice sit in one conversation. Confirm IRA licences. Keep the policy schedule, valuation and certificate where you can produce them at the roadside. Digital delivery only helps if you can find the file.

The cheapest sticker premium is not automatically the best motor insurance in Kenya. The best policy is legal for the road you actually drive, classed for the use you actually make of the car, priced against several underwriters, and written by a licensed insurer that pays valid claims without turning the wording into a trap.

Learn. Compare. Get a Quote. Buy. Claim. Renew—with Imana.

Imana Insurance Agency Kenya Ltd
www.imana.co.ke

MyKava Travel & Insurance
www.mykava.co.ke

Insurance premiums, age limits, short-term cover availability, excesses, claims conditions and underwriting requirements vary between insurers. Always obtain current quotations and review the applicable policy wording before purchasing cover.