Earlier today, I ran into an issue when trying to renew the road tax for my vehicle online. After entering my vehicle plate number and owner ID, I received an error message stating:
We are unable to renew your road tax. Our records show that your vehicle has insufficient/no insurance coverage. Your current insurance is valid from xxxx to xxxx. [UL00071]
This was confusing as I had already renewed my vehicle insurance policy. After some research online, I discovered this is actually a common issue many vehicle owners face.
The root cause was that when I purchased my new insurance policy to replace the expiring one, there was a 1-day gap between the end date of the new policy and the road tax renewal date required by the Land Transport Authority's vehicle registration records.
While the error message is unclear, the reason I could not renew my road tax (even for just 6 months) was because my insurance coverage fell short by 1 day from the minimum required for renewal.
In my case, my road tax will expire on 28 May 2024 but my insurance end date is on 27 Nov 2024. This means that if I renew the road tax for 6 months, I'll need car insurance till 28 Nov 2024 instead of 27 Nov 2024. It was an error on my part when I changed insurance provider after my initial insurance has lapsed.
If you encounter this "insufficient insurance coverage" error, it likely means your insurance policy end date is earlier than the minimum coverage period needed for road tax renewal, even if it's just by a day or two.
This error might be hidden when you are trying to renew your road tax for 12 months instead of the 6 months period or if you've purchased the car from someone else.
The solution is to extend your existing insurance policy to cover the shortfall period. Here are the steps I took:
Logged into my insurer's (FWD) website
Found the option to extend my policy
Paid a top-up fee of $21.80 to extend coverage by 1 day
Waited 3-4 hours for this extension to be updated in the LTA's vehicle records
After this short extension was processed, I could successfully renew my road tax online for the full period.
How to find my road tax expiry date
You can check your current road tax expiry date by logging into your SingPass app, navigating to the "Driving and Vehicle" section and scroll down to "Vehicle Asset". Compare this date to your insurance policy end date to identify any shortfall period requiring a policy extension.
While frustrating, this issue is easily resolved once you extend your insurance coverage to meet the LTA's minimum requirements for road tax renewal. The key is ensuring your policy period covers at least until your road tax expiry date.