Burned car and insurance: covered at €298 a year

No, liability insurance never reimburses a burned car: mini-omnium pays for fire, at €298 a year more than liability alone on average. Without it, a three-year-old car worth €18,000 leaves a €15,800 dead loss. The remaining question is the car value at which that bet pays off.

Is a burned car reimbursed by insurance?

In principle yes, provided you have at least mini-omnium. Fire belongs to the standard bundle of theft, fire, glass breakage and natural events, as the Ethias information document sums it up. The Mon-Assurance-Auto price page spells out the scope: fire, explosion, lightning, extinguishing work, short-circuit without flames.

Does liability insurance pay anything?

Not your car. Ever.

The Assuralia brochure, from the insurance industry federation, says it plainly: liability cover pays for damage caused to third parties, and your own damage falls under an additional cover. Let us put a figure on what that leaves. Take a three-year-old car valued at €18,000 whose wreck sells for €2,200: two unattributed market assumptions, taken from our article on total loss. It burns, you only have liability cover, and the dead loss reaches €15,800.

How much does the cover that includes fire cost?

€298 a year on average, but from €185 to €427 depending on the insurer. The calculation is a subtraction on two public Mon-Assurance-Auto grids, dated 26 January 2026 and read on 28 October 2026: liability plus mini-omnium, minus liability alone, at 10,000 km a year.

The same contents cost 2.3 times more at Fédérale than at ACM. And the supplement pays for four covers at once, not fire alone: fire is only a fraction of it, which nobody publishes.

At what car value does mini-omnium pay off?

It pays off when the yearly probability of losing everything exceeds €298 divided by the insured value. No public Belgian statistic on how often insured cars burn was found in the sources read: the grid below therefore gives break-even thresholds, not a forecast. The scale is the Ethias one applied to a €33,193 Golf including VAT, the vehicle simulated by Mon-Assurance-Auto, then round real values once depreciation stops.

Read the right-hand column backwards: on a recent car, about one car in a hundred burning or vanishing each year is enough for the bundle to pay for itself on average. On a €5,000 car it would take one in seventeen.

The 5 to 7% of value rule, detailed in the article on dropping comprehensive cover, puts the frontier between €4,263 and €5,969. Below it, setting aside €298 every year weighs more than the risk. Above it, the question is not profitability but a loss your budget cannot absorb: €15,800 cannot be built up from five years of saved premiums, which come to €1,492.

What payout do you get for a burned car?

The value written in the contract, not the market price. At Ethias, the information document read on 28 October 2026 insures the car at invoice value, with no depreciation from 0 to 12 months, then 1.5% a month up to month 24 and 1% a month up to month 72. On the €33,193 Golf that gives €23,235 at 36 months, when a compact car of that age trades around €18,000. From month 73, only the real value is paid.

Other insurers have their own scale: the comparison of new-car value cover shows how far the durations diverge, and the article on total loss does the final count, deductible and wreck included.

Is arson reimbursed?

In principle yes, but the line of the contract it lands in matters. A fire set by a stranger is both a fire and an act of vandalism. The Ethias document excludes "acts of vandalism" from its mini-omnium. If the insurer files the claim as vandalism, you need full omnium, which adds €474 on average, as our article on vandalism shows.

A police report is essential either way. It proves the fire was deliberate and rules out any suspicion of fraud.

What should you do in the first 48 hours?

A few reflexes avoid most disputes.

• Have the fire brigade record the incident and keep their report.
• Photograph the car from several angles before it is towed.
• Do not clear away or sell the wreck before the expert has seen it.
• File a police report if the fire was deliberate or involves a third party.
• Report the claim within the contract deadline, most often eight days, under article 74 of the Belgian Insurance Act of 4 April 2014.
• Gather the purchase invoice, the registration certificate and every key.

The full procedure is in report a car insurance claim in Belgium. For theft of the vehicle, covered by the same bundle, see stolen car.

Method, reference profile and sources

Premiums come from the public liability and mini-omnium grids of Mon-Assurance-Auto, published by Yago S.A. (a broker licensed by the FSMA, Belgium's financial services and markets authority, no. 114863), dated 26 January 2026 and read on 28 October 2026. Simulated profile: a woman born in 1968, on the lowest bonus-malus degree, VW Golf Diesel 85 kW worth €33,193 including VAT, Walloon Brabant, 10,000 km a year. It differs from this site's reference profile (a 35-year-old driver, Golf 1.5 TSI, Flemish Brabant, zero claims in five years, about 15,000 km a year): absolute amounts do not transpose as they stand, the gaps between insurers do. Our article on the cost of comprehensive insurance used €807 for Ethias mini-omnium and an average supplement of €308; the page read today shows €747, hence €298 here.

The supplement, the thresholds and the value of the car at each age are our own calculations. The real value of €18,000 and the wreck at €2,200 are unattributed market ranges. The depreciation scale is the one in the Ethias information document, applied to the €33,193 Golf; each contract has its own. The 5 to 7% rule is set out by Wikifin, the FSMA's financial education portal. The principle that liability cover does not pay for the liable driver's own car comes from Assuralia. Mini-omnium deductible amounts are not published, so none is given. All premiums include Belgium's tax on insurance premiums, which is already built into insurers' advertised prices.

This site compares and calculates. It does not sell insurance, is not an intermediary within the meaning of the Act of 4 April 2014 and gives no individual recommendation: contact your insurer or an FSMA-licensed broker. In a dispute, the Insurance Ombudsman steps in free of charge; the Bureau de Tarification is the remedy for a driver no insurer will accept for liability cover, and the Fonds commun de garantie (the common guarantee fund) compensates victims of an uninsured driver. No link on this page is affiliated.

In short

Fire on a car is paid by mini-omnium, €298 a year on average and up to 2.3 times more from one insurer to another. It is worth it mostly for a car above €5,000, and at Ethias the payout follows a declining value of €23,235 at 36 months for a Golf bought at €33,193. Run a premium simulation, put the formulas side by side in the comparison tool and open the ranking of the best car insurers before you sign.