Admin Fee

Car and home insurance companies can take additional charges to cover the transaction costs associated with changing or cancelling the policy.

Such charges are called admin fees and can sometimes be linked to the cost associated with third-party software house suppliers’ offering electronic trading capabilities and techniques to administer the policies where the production and maintenance of the customer documentation are handled.

If you buy an insurance policy and plan to cancel it in a few days, you get a minimum of 14 days cooling period to cancel it. For example, if you buy life insurance, you get cooling off for 30 days. 

During this time, you get the documents, and if you are cancelling the policy, the insurer takes some amount from the paid, a small administration fee. 

If you plan to cancel the policy after the given duration, the insurer will give you a refund if you have not made the claims in the policy year, but even in such conditions, you need to pay the administration fees. 

If you plan to cancel the policy because you found a better deal with another insurer, it can be easier to wait until the policy is due for renewal and then switch to another. 

Cancelling a direct debit does not cancel the policy. Even on cancelling, you owe the insurer the premiums, and you may have to contact the insurer to cancel the policy.

Sometimes, the fee for cancelling the policy can be even higher. For example, some policies charge a huge amount to adjust or modify the previous plan.  

It is common to see cancellations or changes in the insurance policy where the name of the driver or vehicle model is changed, and the administration charges are linked to it where the company targets the cost rather than applying charges to all the customer premiums. 

Admin fees can be associated with many financial services like credit card transactions, buying and selling stocks, leased assets management, insurance and other monetary transactions.

Many insurance companies rely on the services of other organizations, and these brokers or partners tell about the applied changes. Motor insurance policy change attracts the highest fees because it is a legal requirement, and the changes are made to the external database for producing new policy certificates.

In the case of house maintenance, it is the fees collected by the landlord or administrator of the society who takes it for cleaning, registration, garbage collection, late check-in and other admin works.