What happens to my car insurance if I get hit by an international driver?

As a holiday destination for travellers and a temporary home to international students, there can be thousands of overseas drivers on our roads at any given time.

While Australia’s road rules are relatively straightforward, on occasion, international drivers can find themselves ending up in a collision with a local motorist’s car.

If that occurs, what happens to the insurance claim and how it's processed can be a little tricky. So what do you do?

In a November 2024 post on the AusLegal Reddit thread, one user sought advice from other commenters on a situation involving a foreign driver.

“An international student was the at-fault party in a traffic accident I was in. He was uninsured. My car was repaired under my insurance. He has refused to pay my insurance company and now they are taking him to court.

“Is there anything stopping him from leaving the country? If he leaves, or doesn’t pay, will I have to pay the excess or any other costs?”

One commenter, who claimed to have a similar experience, stated, “In my case, the other side refused to provide insurance details, so my insurer sued them, took the better part of five years of winning, then losing appeal, then re-filing, then finally getting a final judgement”.

“The entire thing required possibly five to 10 hours of my time spread over the course of five years, which is a reasonable price to pay for having your vehicle repaired without excess by your insurer and not having to chase a potentially insolvent party with your own money and lawyers,” they added.

To avoid any unwanted follow-ups and excess fees following an accident with an international driver, Drive reached out to a few experts to determine the necessary steps when it comes to filing a claim. Here’s what they said.

Depending on your insurer, if your vehicle gets damaged by an international driver, you won’t have to do anything out of the ordinary in the claiming process.

This means that following the accident, the affected drivers need to exchange things such as registration and driver’s licence details, as well as their insurers' and their own contact information, before each person files their repair claims through their respective companies.

A spokesperson for the Insurance Council of Australia, the national representative body of the Australian insurance industry, told Drive, “If the driver is insured, their policy will cover the cost of repairs if they are involved in an accident, regardless of who the other party is”.

“If the insured driver is deemed not at fault and can provide the responsible person’s details (via an exchange of licence and registration) their excess will be waived,” they added.

Chris Jarrett, Executive General Manager for Claims Services at Youi Insurance, said customers who get into an accident with an at-fault international driver need to follow the “standard [claims] procedures” for the repair costs.

“Customers can rest assured that the usual Product Disclosure Statement (PDS) conditions apply regardless of whether the at-fault driver is international or not," he said.

“The PDS explicitly states that each claim has an excess, and conditions for waiving the excess apply regardless of whether the third party is international or insured. All our insured customers’ repairs are settled by our standard processes, which include thorough [vehicle] assessments by Youi.”

An Allianz insurance spokesperson told Drive, “The claims would be processed in the same way as any other. Assuming the international driver is responsible, Allianz will determine whether the customer needs to pay the excess, which is waived if the third party's details are provided, regardless of licence type”.

Generally speaking, insurers can attempt to recover payment from an international driver who has left the country before the claiming process has been finalised. Depending on your insurer and policy, this means you won’t have to chase the recovery payment yourself.

“There’s no impact on our customer’s claim settlement if the [at fault] international driver leaves Australia… any recovery action from the international driver is handled separately to our insured customer,” Jarrett from Youi Insurance said.

An Allianz spokesperson told Drive, it “would determine if recovery is possible and take the necessary action to recoup the costs”, and if the insurance company is unable to retrieve the payment, it would write off the debt without affecting the claimant.

Similarly, an ICA spokesperson said if an at-fault foreign driver decides to leave the country, the situation “should not impact the insured driver’s coverage”.

“The driver’s vehicle will be repaired in the same way as if it happened with a person using an Australian driver’s licence,” they explained.

Ethan Cardinal graduated with a Journalism degree in 2020 from La Trobe University and has been working in the fashion industry as a freelance writer prior to joining Drive in 2023. Ethan greatly enjoys investigating and reporting on the cross sections between automotive, lifestyle and culture. Ethan relishes the opportunity to explore how deep cars are intertwined within different industries and how they could affect both casual readers and car enthusiasts.

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