Help with Insurance

phjb

Recently a Romanian lorry driver crashed into me on a roundabout, the
police came and an incident report number was given. The police
confirmed it was his fault. However, I'm not sure what to do about
claiming as all his insurance details are in Romanian.

I'm a young driver with two years NCB, the car is in good condition but due to its age (& value) only insured TPFT. I'm sure it would be
written off if claimed through an British insurance Co.
Have you any experience & advise with a claim on foreign insurance
companies?

Am I correct in assuming If I report it to my insurance co. and do not
successfully claim from the Romanian would I lose my NCB? I can't afford
this as I am a student with little income.

The car is drivable at the moment, also, my Dad is quite handy and could
repair the car with 2 replacement doors & a wing from a scrap yard.
Should I just put this down to experience & forget claiming on the lorry
driver?

Any help would be much appreciated, thank you.

Quentin

Your ncb will only be affected if there is a claim against you by a third party, and it is paid by your insurers. From what you say this doesn't look likely in this incident.

You should claim against the insurer or the owner of the lorry.

As you are only third party insured, your insurer won't help over your claim, but you should inform them of the incident asap.

lisyloo

Would legal expenses cover help in such a case?
i.e.is it not an uninsured loss?

dogbot

This is indeed an uninsured loss. There are several options and it is relativly easy to deal directly with this yourself, see option 3

Option 1)

OP, do you have legal expenses cover? If so, give them a call now, you have paid for their help already. If not, you could buy after the event cover to help you pursue the claim - contact a broker for information and make sure you understand the full consequences. However, in this case you might not really need it, unless injured.

Option 2)

Alternativly you could approach an accident management company or credit hire firm who will handle the claim for you.

Be warned this will mean you deal with issues arround credit hire and accident management companies. I won't go into details now - do a search on the forum and web - but basicaly you will be hiring a vehicle on credit. If they don't get the money back from the other side there is a chance you will be liable for the (very high) cost of that credit hire. Even without this an accident management company may charge you a fee.


Option 3)

If you want to handle it all yourself then contact the Motor Insurers' Bureau who are a whole manner of things to the UK motorist. Look under the green card system on their website.

As you can see here on their website you can search for the UK representative of any insurer who issues a motor policy in another EU country, including Romania.

Click on the drop down box and find a country (i.e. Romania), then click on the "Select Insurer" box and select the insurance company from the details the lorry driver gave you.

You can contact that representative yourself who will have an international claims unit or will be a specialist firm who handle claims for the insurer. Often there is a named contact.

I would recomend contacting them by phone at first and be prepared to send them copies of everything you have in the post, scanned on an email or by fax. If you can, include some photos of the damage to your vehicle and definatly if you have photos from the accident.

They may already have details of the incident or may not. Be prepared for it to take a while since they have to get a response from their Romanian office which can take some time. There are set timescales during which they must respond. Email the MIB for more details on [EMAIL="information@mib.org.uk"]information@mib.org.uk[/EMAIL] or consult the green card section of their website.

dacouch

Good Luck as these claims can take some time, Dogbots info has covered it well.

I dealt with one of these recently, it can be worth googling the Lorry Drivers Company name and contacting them. Be aware that the Lorry driver will probably not get back to Romania for a good few days and they tend to report the accident to their bosses when they get back.

Excerise caution if you have a credit hire vehicle, read the document they get you to sign and be aware there is a very smalll chance you could end up paying the bill of the hire vehicle.