No Claim Bonus Calculator 2026 with Break-Even Verdict

A No Claim Bonus, or NCB, is a discount you earn on your Own Damage insurance premium for every consecutive year you do not file a claim. It starts at 20% after your first claim-free year and rises through 25%, 35%, and 45% to a maximum of 50% after five claim-free years. The discount is a reward for safe driving and is one of the largest levers you have to reduce your renewal premium.

Importantly, the NCB applies only to the Own Damage portion of a comprehensive or standalone own-damage policy, which is the part that covers damage to your own vehicle. It does not apply to the third-party liability premium, which is fixed by the regulator. The slabs are standardised by IRDAI, so every insurer in India offers exactly the same NCB percentages, and no company can offer you a higher or lower rate.

The NCB is calculated as a percentage of your Own Damage premium, based on the number of consecutive years you have gone without filing a claim. If your Own Damage premium is 10,000 rupees and you are on the 25% slab after two claim-free years, your NCB discount is 2,500 rupees, and you pay 7,500 rupees for the Own Damage portion before adding the third-party premium.

The percentage climbs each claim-free year until it caps at 50%. The single most important point that this calculator addresses is the cost of losing your NCB: when you claim, you do not just lose one year of discount, you drop to zero and must rebuild over five years. The true cost is the sum of the extra premium across all five rebuild years, which our rebuild ladder computes exactly rather than using the common but wrong shortcut of five times your current discount.

The rule is simple: compare the repair cost to your break-even number, which is the total NCB you would lose by resetting. If the repair costs more than the break-even, file the claim, because the insurer covers a larger amount than the bonus you sacrifice. If the repair costs less than the break-even, pay for it yourself, because keeping your bonus saves you more over the rebuild years than the claim is worth.

For a driver at 50% NCB on an 18,000 rupee premium, the break-even is around 13,500 rupees, so a 6,000 rupee scratch should be paid out of pocket while a 40,000 rupee accident should be claimed. This single comparison is the most valuable output of the calculator, because filing small claims is the most common and most expensive NCB mistake drivers make. Small claims quietly cost far more in lost bonus than their face value suggests.

No, and this is a very common misunderstanding. The NCB applies only to the Own Damage component of your premium, not the total. A comprehensive car insurance premium has two main parts: the Own Damage premium, which covers damage to your own vehicle and is based on your vehicle value and add-ons, and the third-party liability premium, which covers injury or damage you cause to others and is fixed by IRDAI according to your engine capacity.

The NCB discount is applied only to the Own Damage part. So if your total premium is 12,000 rupees with an Own Damage portion of 8,000 rupees, a 25% NCB reduces the Own Damage by 2,000 rupees, not the full premium by 3,000 rupees. When you look at advertised savings, always check whether the percentage is being applied to the Own Damage premium alone, which is the correct and regulated basis.

Any claim, regardless of its size, resets your NCB to zero at the next renewal, unless you hold an NCB Protection add-on. A 500 rupee windshield claim triggers the same reset as a major accident claim. After the reset, you begin rebuilding from zero: 20% after the next claim-free year, then 25%, and so on back up to 50% over five years.

This is why the true cost of a claim includes not just the immediate loss of your current discount but the higher premiums you pay throughout the entire rebuild period. The calculator shows this as a year-by-year ladder so you can see the real total. The only way to make a claim without losing your bonus is to have purchased an NCB Protection rider in advance, and even then, many riders still step you down by a slab or two rather than fully freezing your position.

It depends on your slab, your premium size, and your realistic chance of claiming. The NCB Protection add-on, which typically costs 5 to 10% of your Own Damage premium, lets you make one claim in the policy year without your bonus resetting to zero. It is most valuable for drivers at the 45 or 50% slab with a large Own Damage premium, because those are the people who stand to lose the most from a reset.

To decide, weigh the add-on cost against the expected saving, which is your chance of claiming multiplied by the NCB you would otherwise lose. If that expected saving exceeds the add-on cost, the rider is worth buying. Be aware that many protection riders do not fully freeze your slab; they still drop you one or two levels after a protected claim, so read the fine print and use the realistic step-down in your calculation rather than assuming complete protection.

Yes. Your NCB belongs to you as the policyholder, not to the vehicle, so when you sell your old car and buy a new one, you can carry your accumulated bonus to the new car’s policy. You do this by obtaining an NCB Transfer Certificate from your existing insurer, usually when you sell the old vehicle, and presenting it when you insure the new one.

The transfer must generally be completed within about 90 days of selling the old car or cancelling its policy. This is genuinely valuable, because a new car often has a higher Own Damage premium, so your existing 50% discount saves you even more money in rupee terms on the pricier policy. Do not let this benefit slip: many drivers forget to transfer their NCB and needlessly start from zero on their new vehicle, throwing away years of accumulated discount in the process.

If your policy lapses for more than 90 days, your entire accumulated NCB is wiped out permanently, and you must start rebuilding from zero. This is one of the most expensive and avoidable mistakes in motor insurance. A driver who has spent five years reaching the 50% slab can lose the whole thing simply by forgetting to renew on time and letting the gap stretch beyond 90 days.

The financial damage from a lapse can be far greater than the renewal premium the driver was trying to defer. If you renew within the 90-day grace window, your NCB is usually preserved, though you should confirm the exact rules with your insurer. The safest practice is to renew before your policy expires, or at minimum well within the grace period, and to set a calendar reminder ahead of your renewal date so a lapse never happens by accident.

Because this calculator computes the rebuild cost correctly, while many others use a shortcut that overstates it. The common but wrong method is to multiply your current discount by five, on the assumption that you lose your full current discount for five years. That is not how the rebuild works.

After a claim you do not stay at zero for five years; you climb back through the slabs, reaching 20% after one year, 25% after two, and so on. So the extra premium you pay is the shrinking gap between the slab you would have been on and the slab you are actually on, which declines each year and hits zero by year five. For a 50% driver, the real losses are 30%, 25%, 15%, 5%, and 0% of the Own Damage premium, not 50% five times over. This gives a materially lower and more honest figure, which is important because it changes the claim decision for mid-sized repairs where the inflated number would wrongly push you to pay out of pocket.

Yes, the NCB system works the same way for two-wheelers as it does for cars. If you have a comprehensive bike insurance policy or a standalone own-damage cover, you earn the same IRDAI slabs of 20 to 50% on your Own Damage premium for each consecutive claim-free year, and the same reset-on-claim and rebuild rules apply. The main practical difference is that two-wheeler Own Damage premiums are usually much smaller than car premiums, so the rupee value of the bonus is lower, which means the break-even damage figure is also lower.

This affects the claim decision: on a bike, even a modest repair may exceed the break-even because the bonus at stake is small. The protection add-on is also less frequently worthwhile on two-wheelers for the same reason. You can use this calculator for a bike simply by entering your two-wheeler Own Damage premium and claim-free years.

Your current NCB percentage is printed on your insurance policy schedule or renewal notice, usually in the premium calculation section where the Own Damage discount is itemised. If you cannot find it there, you can ask your insurer or agent directly, and they can confirm your slab from their records. When you switch insurers, the new company verifies your declared NCB against the Insurance Information Bureau database, so the figure is on record.

It is worth checking your NCB before every renewal, because it determines a large part of your premium and because errors do occur. If you believe your NCB should be higher than what is shown, perhaps because a claim-free year was not recorded, raise it with your insurer before renewing. Knowing your exact slab is also essential for using this calculator accurately, since the entire break-even and rebuild analysis depends on which slab you are currently on.

Generally yes, any Own Damage claim affects your NCB regardless of which add-on covers were in play, unless you specifically hold NCB Protection. A zero-depreciation add-on changes how much the insurer pays out by removing depreciation from the settlement, but it does not change the fact that you have made a claim, so your NCB still resets. The same applies to most other add-ons like engine protection or consumables cover: using them means filing a claim, which triggers the reset.

The one exception is the NCB Protection add-on itself, which is designed precisely to shield your bonus from a reset. This is why it is important not to confuse zero-depreciation cover with NCB protection; they solve completely different problems. Zero-depreciation maximises your claim payout, while NCB protection preserves your discount. If protecting your bonus matters to you, you need the specific NCB Protection rider, not just a generous add-on package.

No. The maximum NCB in India is 50%, reached after five or more consecutive claim-free years, and this cap is fixed by IRDAI under the Indian Motor Tariff. No insurer can legally offer you a 55% or 60% NCB, so any such claim you encounter is either a misunderstanding or a marketing gimmick that bundles the 50% NCB with unrelated discounts.

Once you reach 50%, staying claim-free simply maintains that slab; it does not push you higher. What insurers can and do offer on top of the NCB are other discounts, such as for installing anti-theft devices, being a member of a recognised automobile association, or opting for voluntary deductibles, but these are separate from the NCB and are not part of the regulated slab system. So while your total premium can fall below the level that a 50% NCB alone would produce, the NCB component itself is capped at 50%, and reaching that cap is the ceiling of what safe driving alone can earn you.

This is a nuanced area. The NCB relates to your Own Damage cover, so the way a claim affects it depends on the nature of the claim. If you file an Own Damage claim for repairs to your own vehicle, your NCB resets.

Pure third-party liability claims, where you have caused damage or injury to someone else and your own vehicle is not being repaired under your policy, are treated differently by insurers, and in some cases they may not affect your Own Damage NCB in the same way. However, practice varies between insurers and situations, and many accidents involve both own-damage and third-party elements. Because the treatment is not uniform and depends on your specific policy wording, you should not assume a claim is NCB-neutral without confirming with your insurer. When in doubt, treat any claim as potentially affecting your NCB and run the break-even check before deciding, so you are not caught out by an unexpected reset at renewal.

Over the life of a car, disciplined NCB management can save a substantial amount, often in the range of tens of thousands of rupees. Consider a driver who reaches 50% and maintains it: on an Own Damage premium of 15,000 to 20,000 rupees, that is a saving of 7,500 to 10,000 rupees every single year, which across a ten-year ownership adds up to a large sum.

The savings come not just from reaching the maximum slab but from avoiding the costly mistakes that reset it: filing small claims that fall below the break-even, letting the policy lapse past 90 days, and forgetting to transfer the bonus when buying a new car. Each of those errors can cost you thousands in rebuilt premium. The drivers who save the most are not necessarily those with the cheapest policies, but those who understand the break-even math, protect their bonus when it makes sense, and never throw away years of accumulated discount through a careless lapse or an unnecessary small claim.

Yes. The NCB rules are identical for cars and two-wheelers, so this calculator works for both. Simply enter your vehicle’s Own Damage premium and your number of consecutive claim-free years, and the tool applies the same IRDAI slabs, computes the same rebuild ladder, and gives you the same break-even and protection analysis.

The only thing that changes is the scale of the numbers: two-wheeler Own Damage premiums are typically much lower than car premiums, so the rupee value of your bonus, and therefore your break-even damage figure, will be correspondingly smaller. This means that on a bike, the threshold above which claiming makes sense is lower, and a repair that you would absorb on a car might be worth claiming on a bike. The underlying logic is the same in both cases: compare your repair cost to the break-even, protect high-value bonuses when the odds justify it, and never let a lapse or an unnecessary small claim destroy the discount you have built.