Companies looking to tighten the purse strings on business travel could be saving up to 80%* (see Table 1) on their car hire excess insurance bill by buying excess car hire insurance in advance rather than letting their team purchase it at the rental desk.

A car hire excess insurance waiver bought direct from a rental company is approximately £17 a day compared with £2.99 per day for a policy from iCarhireinsurance.com, the leading provider of stand-alone car hire excess insurance policies.

Buying the daily excess waiver from the car hire company adds on up to 75% again to the original rental cost, according to iCarhireinsurance.com research.

A business traveller, who does not purchase excess insurance, is leaving his or her company liable for up to £1,000 if the hire car gets damaged or stolen (even if it's not their fault).

"Many business travellers are risking high excess claims by not having car hire excess insurance," said Ernesto Suarez, founder and CEO of iCarhireinsurance.com, "and those that do probably think nothing of buying the expensive cover available from the rental desk as it's company money. Companies are quite literally chucking money away by not buying their excess policies in advance from a specialist provider, like iCarhireinsurance.com."

"We did the math and were staggered to discover that a saving of almost £400 or close to 90% could be made by buying an annual policy for each team member," said Chris Hopcroft, Managing Director of Strickland Tracks Ltd, a UK manufacturer of specialist crawler track systems with a number of international clients and suppliers. "Before, we were finding that whatever the car cost to hire, it would cost almost half as much again to buy excess waiver insurance on top from the rental company. Our team are travelling worldwide and by using iCarhireinsurance.com's policies we've now drastically reduced out car hire budget."

Regular business users can buy an annual policy from just £39.99 which allows them to make an unlimited number of trips each year, and use it for leisure travel too.

Ernesto Suarez said: "Send us your rental expenses and we will review them, free of charge, and provide a report detailing the amount that could be saved with iCarhireinsurance.com annual policies."

iCarhireinsurance.com policies also cover vulnerable parts, including windows, tyres, windscreens and the undercarriages, which the rental companies usually exclude.

Car hire insurance policies are available for Europe, USA and Canada or Worldwide. Visit iCarhireinsurance.com for more details.

Table 1: Excess Insurance cost to rent a VW Golf class car from London Heathrow for a seven day trip from 29 March - 5 April 2013