New-car value cover in Belgian car insurance: what it pays

New-car value in a Belgian omnium policy is a duration, not a bonus: for 24 to 30 months depending on the insurer, the car is paid out at its purchase price. On a Golf bought for €31,670, Ethias's longer formula pays up to €7,600.80 more at month 30. By month 46, it pays nothing extra.

It all sits in a depreciation schedule, and few pages publish it.

What does "new-car value" mean in a Belgian omnium policy?

A period during which the insurer does not depreciate the car. It is paid at invoice value, or failing that list price, as the Ethias information sheet states, with no deduction for age.

Three values coexist in a contract, and a claim uses only one. Market value is what the car is worth on the day of the crash, set by an expert. Agreed value is fixed at signature and falls along a schedule attached to the policy. New-car value is only the first step of that schedule, where the percentage stays at 100 %.

Comparateur.be also points to contracts that start higher: a so-called replacement or revalued value beginning at 110 or 115 % of list price. On €31,670, that gives €34,837 or €36,420.50. It is not the rule, and none of the sheets consulted here applies it.

Our article on total loss details the final calculation, excess and wreck included. This one stays on a single question: how long does the 100 % step last, and what is extending it worth?

Market value, standard agreed value, long new-value cover: the numbers side by side

Take the site's reference profile, a Golf 1.5 TSI bought for €31,670 including VAT (Belgian price surveyed on 31 August 2026). Apply the two schedules of the Ethias information sheet published by Comparateur.be and consulted on 20 October 2026. The first applies to mini-omnium, mini-omnium Plus and omnium, the second to omnium Plus.

A market benchmark helps place these figures. At 36 months, a petrol compact of that age trades between €17,400 and €19,000 in Belgium (unattributed range, taken from our total-loss article). At the midpoint, €18,000, the standard schedule pays €4,169 more than the market, the long schedule €8,919.50 more.

The long formula's gain peaks at month 30 and vanishes at month 46

The long formula does not protect for longer. It shifts the drop.

For 30 months the value stays intact, then it falls 2.5 % a month, faster than the standard schedule, which loses 1 % a month at that stage. The gap widens to 24 points at month 30, then narrows and disappears at month 46, where the two curves cross at 60 % of value. After that, depreciation is identical, 1 % a month, until month 72.

Paying for the long formula after month 46 therefore buys nothing.

A note on our own work. Our Ethias profile read the "30 months without depreciation" option linearly, with a 27 % gap at month 30. The information sheet's monthly schedule gives 24 %. On a €33,500 car, the maximum gain is €8,040, not €9,045. The break-even threshold stays in the same order of magnitude.

What extra premium makes the long cover worthwhile?

It depends on risk, and risk is a yearly percentage of total loss or theft.

No public price for the Plus formula was found. So the extra premium is a stated assumption, set as a percentage of the reference profile's average omnium: €1,135 a year (Mon-Assurance-Auto, surveyed on 26 January 2026). Three levels, 3 %, 5 % and 8 %, or €34.05, €56.75 and €90.80.

The calculation is simple: extra premium divided by gain. It gives the yearly probability above which the option pays for itself.

Reading: at 36 months with a €56.75 extra premium, the option pays off if roughly one car in 84 is lost each year. At month 44 it would take one in 17. These thresholds are orders of magnitude, because the gain changes month by month; they locate the zone, they do not set a price.

Two lessons. In the first two years the threshold stays low: the option makes sense for a driver who parks on the street or drives a lot. From month 40 the threshold climbs fast and the question becomes more about the contract than about risk.

24 or 30 months: what published offers show

Four insurers publicly show the length of their step. Here is what the surveys say, for a 5-door Golf diesel 85 kW at €23,425 excluding VAT, in Wallonia, at bonus-malus degree 0 (the Belgian 0 to 22 scale of claims history).

The last column is not the price of new-car value. It is the premium for the whole contract, paid while the value stays intact. It simply shows that the longest duration in the table (CBC, 30 months) sits in the highest premium.

The survey comes from Hellosafe, whose page shows a 2026 update while its text is dated 26 August 2022: treat these premiums as an order of magnitude, not a tariff. Ethias appears here only through its information sheet, which gives no price.

Should you pay for the long cover on a used car?

Almost never. The Ethias sheet's schedule is indexed on the age of the vehicle, not the age of the contract, which you should confirm in your own conditions.

A 36-month-old car bought for €22,000 enters the contract with only 10 months of step ahead of it. The long formula's maximum gain is 15 % of €22,000, or €3,300, and it melts to zero at month 46. For €56.75 of extra premium over 10 months that is not absurd, but the threshold climbs to 5 % yearly risk by the end of the period. At 48 months and beyond, there is nothing left to buy.

Which points should you check in the conditions before signing?

Five lines decide everything, and they sit in the special conditions.

• The starting point. First registration or contract date: on a used car, the difference can cancel the option.
• The calculation base. Invoice value or list value. On a car bought at a discount, the invoice is lower than the list price.
• The slope after the step. 1 %, 1.5 % or 2.5 % a month: Ethias's long formula falls faster than the standard one.
• The floor. A minimum-value guarantee, here until month 72, which stops you receiving less than market value.
• The excess. It comes off at the end of the calculation, as in an ordinary total loss; see our guide to the omnium excess.

To know when omnium stops paying for itself altogether, the article on dropping omnium gives the tipping year for the reference profile.

Method, reference profile and sources

The site's reference profile: a 35-year-old driver, Volkswagen Golf 1.5 TSI, Flemish Brabant, no claim for five years, about 15,000 km a year. Purchase value used: €31,670 including VAT, Belgian price surveyed on 31 August 2026 in the Moniteur Automobile catalogue. The schedule values are an in-house calculation applying the depreciation percentages of the Ethias information sheet (IPID) hosted by Comparateur.be, consulted on 20 October 2026; the sheet carries no edition date and the contract terms prevail.

The €1,135 average premium comes from the public grid of Mon-Assurance-Auto (Yago S.A., broker licensed by the FSMA, the Belgian financial services and markets authority, no. 114863), surveyed on 26 January 2026. The 24 and 30 month durations and the last table's premiums come from the Hellosafe omnium page, consulted on 20 October 2026. The 110 and 115 % replacement values come from the Comparateur.be full omnium page. The principle of agreed value is explained by Test-Achats and Wikifin, the FSMA's financial education initiative.

The extra premium as a percentage of premium and the loss probability are calculation assumptions, not statistics. The legal framework is the law of 4 April 2014 on insurance.

This site compares and calculates. It does not sell insurance, is not an intermediary under Belgian law and gives no individual recommendation: speak to your insurer or a broker licensed by the FSMA. In a dispute, the Insurance Ombudsman acts free of charge; the Bureau de Tarification is the fallback for a driver refused liability cover, and the Fonds commun de garantie steps in if the responsible party is uninsured. No link is affiliated.

In short

New-car value is a duration: 12 months on standard omnium at Ethias, 24 at Allianz and Fédérale Assurance, 30 at CBC. On a €31,670 Golf, Ethias's long formula pays €7,600.80 more at month 30, €4,750.50 at month 36 and nothing at month 46. It earns its keep on a recent car, rarely on a used one. Run a premium simulation, line up the formulas in the comparison tool and open the ranking of the best car insurers to compare insurer by insurer.