I live in Switzerland and travel back to UK regularly, often needing to rent a car. I used to be able to buy excess insurance for car hire on an annual basis, as a Swiss resident, from UK firms. However although several still offer this type of policy (and it is usually very good value being much cheaper than buying insurance from the hire companies), they all now restrict access to UK residents only. Is this because non-UK resident drivers are a poor risk or is there some regulation which prevents them from selling policies to non-residents?