Legal cover for car insurance - Buy separately?

lisyloo wrote: »

You've been misled or the call center person didn't understand.
Legal cover is to pursue someone for your uninsured losses i.e. what's not covered by your insurance policy e.g. you time off, personal injury, perhaps your clothing etc.
They will ONLY pursue an uninsured motorist if they were likely to get the money back, so if they were an unemployed person on benefits then your legalcover is useless.

Bad selling from SAGA.

You are correct as far as the spiel the call centre monkey has given them, but you are incorrect as far as the uninsured third party situation is concerned as a claim would be submitted for the uninsured losses to the MIB under the Uninsured Drivers Agreement.

It is up to the MIB to decide after paying out to the innocent motorist whether there is any merits in then chasing the uninsured driver for the outlay they have incurred.

It has been a racket for years to be honest.

I know of many brokers who get given the policies / underwriting for free, others pay a max of about 50p per policy and then sell it out the door for £20+. So they make a decent mark up on selling the cover to start with.

If you have a non-fault claim they are quick to get you to use the scheme so you get referred for car hire, off to a PI solicitor etc etc. The broker or insurer gets referral fees which is another nice little earner. But the travesty really is that the actual "legal expenses policy" does not ever get claimed against.

Why is this? Well it is because the cases that have prospects of success result in any fees etc being paid by the insurers of the party at fault.

If your case is a bit borderline, they will not be interested to indemnify you for your solicitor's costs because they don't want to be hit up for your solicitor's costs when you come second at court, nor do they want molesting for the other party's legal costs if you lost.

The selling of legal expenses insurance is mainly just to have a claims capture mechanism.

It was not uncommon for panel solicitors for these legal expenses insurers to be bullied into agreeing never to claim off the policy even if a case was run to court and lost. So the insurers were never taking a hit.

There is a bigger question on the horizon for the need of having Before The Event legal expenses insurance. Namely Qualified One-way Costs Shifting. This is on the horizon in the early part of next year and essentially means that if you run your case to court and lose, you still won't have to pay the other side's costs, unless you fail to beat a Part 36 offer or your case is generally found to be frivolous or vexatious.

Really speaking, the only real world benefit of having this cover is that it is all laid out for you when you have a smack, so you don't then need to go searching around for someone to deal with your claim, but the downside is that most of these policies will involve the instruction of a "factory firm" of solicitors. For a totally straight forward claim with no hassles, they probably aren't bad, but anything with a liability dispute or anything complex with the injuries or damages and you get poor client service. They just want your case settled as soon as possible and this leads to items of claim not even being pursued, clients badly advised and often, cases under-settled.

Calm down Quentin.

Thanks for the free promotion of my activities.

I am indeed back after being briefly banned for my previous behaviour of posting a link to a site I own. I discussed the situation with the forum team and I have been given a reprieve.

I have learned my lesson and will be the model of a good MSE member from this point onwards.

I am here to participate in debate and discussion and to post any helpful input on threads where I feel that it will help other posters.

With the above in mind, we should not have any problems going fowards, should we?

You just seem a little annoyed by my presence and I hope this is something that will pass.

I stand by my lengthy post above and I don't doubt that other persons in the insurance business would agree with me that the selling of motor legal protection insurance is just a moneyspinner and a claims capture mechanism. Rarely is an actual indemnity granted for reasons I have pointed out already.

My post was for information purposes, not a promotion of any sorts. Just highlighting to people who do not understand how the industry actually works.

As for the alter-ego - here is a copy and paste of the email from the MSE team.

Hi Lee

Thanks for your email, your understanding of how we work is appreciated.

We can reinstate your posting privileges under the understanding you shan't attempt to refer people any business of yours, but we'll need you to change your username to one that doesn't identify you or the business you work in.

If you can provide us with three choices of new username in order of preference, in case one's taken, we can do this.

Should you need to contact us regarding this response, please quote report ID #152095 .If replying by email, please do not alter the subject line.

MSE Forum Team