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Charging mates could invalidate your insurance – do you have examples?

ended 30. July 2025

In today's Daily Mail, it is reported that charging your friends for car lifts could land you in trouble with your car insurance provider.

This is because it could be considered profit-making activity if you're earning on it, with HMRC considering this ‘commercial activty’.

This could invalidate your car insurance.

Today, we're asking what are the other ways you can invalidate your insurance if you're charging friends?

This can include tickets, renting out rooms, takeaways and more…

2 responses from the Newspage community

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Editor
Michelle Lawson
Director at Lawson Financial
No wonder the UK is turning into such a miserable country. There is always someone, somewhere, waiting to rip you off, charge you or catch you out. What happened to live and let live for peaceful enjoyment. No wonder other nations are winning and people are leaving the UK.
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Kundan Bhaduri
Entrepreneur, Investor and Landlord at The Kushman Group
The line between social reciprocity and undeclared commercial activity has become a significant source of contractual risk. Standard insurance policies, whether for a vehicle or a property, are priced on the basis of domestic use. The moment an activity generates a profit, however small, the policyholder has fundamentally misrepresented the risk profile to the underwriter.

Giving a friend a lift is a social act. Operating a de facto taxi service, even for acquaintances, is a business. Renting a spare room to a friend at a commercial rate is not hospitality but rather a tenancy. Insurers are not being punitive by voiding these policies. They are simply enforcing the contract that was agreed upon. In the gig economy, every individual needs to understand the risk when they cross the threshold from being a citizen to being an uninsured sole trader.