A small scratch on your car can create a bigger dilemma than the repair bill itself: should you claim it from your insurer and risk losing the no-claim bonus (NCB) you have built up over years, or pay for the repair yourself?
That trade-off is built into conventional motor insurance. NCB is a discount on the own-damage (OD) premium that a policyholder earns for every claim-free year. It starts at 20% after the first claim-free year and can rise to 50% after five consecutive claim-free years. The benefit also carries over when a policyholder switches insurers at renewal. It applies only to the OD component of the premium; third-party insurance premiums are not eligible for NCB.
Typically, once a claim is made, the accumulated NCB resets to zero at renewal. That can make customers reluctant to claim for smaller damages, particularly when the repair cost is relatively low compared with the premium discount they stand to lose.
Kiwi General Insurance, which started operations this March, is taking a different approach with its Super NCB feature. The insurer allows customers to accumulate NCB of up to 90%, which Kiwi describes as an industry-first. More significantly, a claim does not wipe out the accumulated benefit. Instead, the NCB drops by just one level.
“The more powerful feature is what happens when you make a claim. Your NCB doesn't go back to zero. If you were at 90%, it comes down to 80%; if you were at 80%, it comes down to 70%. So, you move down by just one step rather than losing the entire accumulated benefit,” said Saurav Jaiswal, managing director and chief executive, Kiwi General Insurance.
The insurer has also sought to address another limitation of the conventional system: what happens when a customer switches to Kiwi after making a claim. Say a policyholder has accumulated a 50% NCB with an existing insurer and then makes a claim. Under the conventional structure, the NCB would typically reset to zero at renewal.
If the customer subsequently moves to Kiwi, however, the insurer assesses the previous claims history and driving behaviour and assigns an NCB accordingly, rather than automatically starting from zero.
“The idea is not to punish good customers for one claim. If a claim happens, other insurers will move your NCB to zero. But if you migrate the policy to us, we will give you a discount based on your claims history. This discount will keep increasing up to 90% as the years go by,” said Jaiswal.
Super NCB, however, is not available to every customer. Jaiswal said customers would not be eligible for the benefit in case of a transfer of the car, as the feature is intended to reward the policyholder's own driving behaviour and claims history.
The product appears to have gained strong early traction. “We launched the product in June 2026 and so far we have sold around 5,500 policies, with around 98% attachment to Super NCB,” Jaiswal said.
Saurabh Vijayvergia, founder and chief executive, CoverSure, said the feature is unusual and sends a strong message to the industry to come up with more customer-friendly innovations. “It is an interesting innovation, especially the level-down mechanism.”
What about NCB protector?
The industry already has an NCB protection add-on that allows a policyholder to retain the accumulated NCB even after making a claim, subject to the terms and conditions of the policy. Such protection, however, typically limits the number of claims that can be made in a policy year.
“This rider is not very popular because it is generally limited to one claim a year. It costs around ₹700-1,500, depending on the car model, driving behaviour and other factors,” said Vijayvergia.
The distinction is in how the two mechanisms work. An NCB protector is an add-on that preserves the accumulated bonus against a specified claim. Kiwi's Super NCB, by contrast, changes the underlying NCB structure: it offers a higher potential discount while ensuring that a claim reduces the benefit by only one level rather than wiping it out.
Banking minor damage
NCB is not the only reason customers may hesitate to make small claims. Multiple minor damages generally cannot simply be clubbed into a single claim. If a car gets a scratch on the bumper today and a dent on the door a few months later, the damages would ordinarily have to be treated as separate incidents and claims.
“There could be instances where customers intentionally bundle multiple claims, claiming that all the damage happened together. But if the surveyor finds this out, they will ask you to file each claim separately,” said Vijayvergia.
That can make small claims economically unattractive. Each claim involves a separate claims process and, where applicable, a deductible may also have to be paid. Customers may therefore prefer to pay for minor repairs themselves, particularly when the repair cost is close to the deductible or when they are concerned about the impact on their NCB.
Kiwi's Flexi Repair is designed to address this problem. The feature allows policyholders to bank minor damages and combine them with a larger repair claim later. This could make it more economical for customers who have accumulated several small damages but do not want to raise separate claims for each incident.
"The idea is to discourage customers from either paying for every small repair themselves or raising multiple claims, each of which could attract a deductible and claims processing charges," said Vijayvergia.
Super NCB and Flexi Repair, therefore, target two longstanding pain points in motor insurance: the risk of losing a hard-earned NCB after a claim and the economics of making multiple small claims.
For Kiwi, the bigger question now is whether these features can translate into sustained customer adoption and whether other insurers follow its lead. As a new insurer, its approach will also offer a test of how far customers value flexibility in a market where the conventional incentive has often been to avoid claiming altogether.