Car Insurance Credit Checks -???

sammylou100

Hi,
I'm new to the forums so hopefully you regulars have not seen this a hundred times before!!

Last week I did the multiple quotes thing (as suggested by Martin) to try and get a cheap car insurance quote, I did MoneySupermarket & Confused.com, got some ok quotes but have not yet made up my mind. Yesterday I got an alert on my CreditExpert account (which I highly recommend to everyone as it recently alerted me to my identity being stolen!) The alert told me that 2 of the insurers who had quoted me through Confused.com had done a credit check on me.

I've checked the T's&C's and can't see in there that this might happen. What really worries me is that so many companies quote through them - what if each one did a credit check on me? I'm desperately trying to rebuild my credit score and want to get these searches taken off, any idea how I might go about this?? Am I just missing this in the Ts & Cs?
Please advise! :mad:

sammylou100

I've just been back into my creditexpert account and RSA actually checked my credit 4 times after I got the quote through Confused.com, I just called their call centre and the member of staff there told me that they could not remove the credit checks from my credit record and that them checking my score was just to find out whether I would be suitable for monthly repayments and does not affect my rating...I'm now very CONFUSED.COM!!!

Wutang_2

That is out of order...! I would complain. I have been searching on Confused also and I am now going to check my credit file because if they have credit checked me - I am going to go medievil on them.

who is RSA? My quote was with Admiral.

Does it say anywhere that they will credit check?

sammylou100

I can't see it anywhere, but there's a lot to go through in those Terms & Conditions so I might have missed it. RSA is Royal Sun Alliance, More Than are a branch of them. It's also been checked by Churchill. I'm not sure who to complain to as my call directly to RSA failed miserably and Confused.com have not yet responded. They should definitely warn you about this!

lisyloo

I once had loads of credit checks on my report from RSA (royal sun alliance) when getting quotes from More than. I did a number of different quotes from different scenarios and had multiple checks.
I'm pretty sure that

1) You agreed by ticking a box to say you agreed to the terms and conditions which you may well not have read but were available for you to read.
2) The checks are not of the "credit" type but of the "identitiy" types and will not be biewable by lenders and will not affect your credit worthiness.

zkw29

https://www.confused.com/corporate/privacy-policy

You were asked to tick on the first page of the quote saying you had read this page:

Credit searches - Insurance

Many insurers operate a credit scoring system and will carry out checks with credit reference and fraud prevention agencies. These checks may include electoral roll and credit information. Some insurance checks are registered as ‘general insurance searches’ and may be viewed by other credit or insurance companies if you apply for their services.

The credit searches don't usually show up to other companies and don't affect your credit rating - they aren't an application for credit.

sammylou100

Ah OK, thanks very much, as I am trying to be very good and increase my credit rating when I saw 5 searches on there I panicked, good to know. Thanks for the info.