The lifting of car warranty restrictions in Singapore will lower vehicle maintenance and motor insurance costs, a report by insurance aggregator site Value Penguin has revealed.
Earlier this month, the Competition Commission of Singapore (CCS) scrapped warranty restrictions on car repair, which previously required car owners to have their vehicles serviced only at pre-approved workshops, or else lose their warranty. According to the report, this move will allow owners to save on maintenance and insurance costs.
With around 30% of cars in Singapore below three years old, the CCS decision is set to impact the same amount of vehicle owners, allowing them to save on maintenance costs by choosing the repair shop with the best price, while keeping their vehicle’s warranty.
Meanwhile, the largest savings will come from motor insurance premiums. Under the previous system, both car dealers and insurers had a list of repair shops their customers could use - but in some cases, dealers’ authorised service centres may be different from insurers’ preferred workshops. Value Penguin cited the example of Honda and Toyota, which have eight authorised workshops each, but none of these are among the approved workshops of motor insurers FWD and Etiqa. This means that car owners have to add a few hundred dollars to their motor insurance premiums to allow them to use the manufacturer’s preferred workshop, or risk losing their car’s warranty.
“Since drivers can now take their cars to any service centres, they no longer have to purchase an expensive car insurance policy that will let them take their cars to the dealers’ authorised shops, a change that could help them save more than a thousand dollars in some cases,” the report said.
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