Help with Admiral Renewal

zander99

Hello All,

Hopefully someone can help with a particular concern I have with my girlfriends car insurance renewal.

Essentially at the early part of this year my girlfriends car was hit while it was parked legally in a car park.Not a problem as the driver was clearly at fault for reversing at speed into the car.My girlfriend dutifully informed Admiral(Her insurer) of the accident and passed on all of the relevant information.None of which was a problem the other drivers insurer took care of everything and we had the car back within a week completely repaired.

Now jump forward to this years renewal and Admiral have tagged a £70 increase on the premium onto my girlfriends car insurance as a result of this incident even though the other insurer has admitted full liability and admiral have incurred no cost.We have challenged Admiral on this and they have indicated that this is normal practice.

Is this normal? - I cannot believe it.

Any advice would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks

Alex.

foxwales

Some insurers have started doing this, pushing up premiums in the case of non-fault claims.

Admiral unfortunately do this along with it's other companies, Elephant.co.uk, Bell and Diamond.

They have been slated on some consumer programmes for this very reason too. Look elsewhere for your renewal, stay away from these money pinchers.

zander99

My girlfriend did get a quote with Diamond which was far cheaper but obviously we are concerned about this whole issue.

Do we need to declare this non fault claim when applying for insurance?

When we told Admiral about the cheaper quote from diamond they told us we had to declare to Diamond about the non fault claim which immediately pushed up the quote by £70 which seems like a sharp practice to me.

honeypop

I thought you had to tell them about any claims, whether you were at fault or not - so yes she would have to tell Diamond.

keith1950

Hi, zander99, this is quite normal, as it was not her fault she does not lose her NCB, however the premium itself is increased (loaded) due to a percieved increase in the risk. It may seem unfair but it could be said , for instance, that someone who goes on to have several no fault claims is more susceptable to put themselves in the position of having to make a claim, for example ,not making every effort to reduce every risk.

DrScotsman

keith1950 wrote: »

for instance, that someone who goes on to have several no fault claims is more susceptable to put themselves in the position of having to make a claim, for example ,not making every effort to reduce every risk.

Well said.

For example, if you get rear ended then it is 99.9% of the time the other driver's fault. But did you need to do that emergency stop?

I think there was someone on here a few months who had an accident while reversing. The reverser is almost always at fault, even if the person who smacked into them was doing 30mph on a tight bend in a supermarket car park.

zander, your example doesn't seem to fall into these categories, but unfortunately the insurers don't know that. All they truly know is that there was an accident that and the other party paid out - they don't know for sure if your girlfriend played a part or not. It's unfortunate, but it's fair play from the insurance companies and I'd hardly call it money pinching.

A couple people on these forums have said that you can claim for increased premium from the third party. When I've had a look I've not had much luck on Google - if someone could prove it's possible then I'd be very interested to know, as I have also been in a non-fault accident.

shortchanged_2

To be honest I think you'll find the premium would have gone up this year regardless of if she had an accident or not.

If you scan through many forums at the moment, car insurance premiums have gone up significantly this year (mine has) even if you have no new claims or convictions. Apparantly it's mainly due to all the personal injury claims on the rise.

PNPSUKNET

Normaly none fault increase by £30 a year, but insurance has gone up and you will need to declare for 3-5 years depends on the company

vaio

DrScotsman wrote: »

.......A couple people on these forums have said that you can claim for increased premium from the third party. When I've had a look I've not had much luck on Google - if someone could prove it's possible then I'd be very interested to know, as I have also been in a non-fault accident.

Thanks to the search facility......

vaio wrote: »

You can, I have done it.

8 or 9 years ago a 4x4 driver reversed into me whilst I was parked and cracked the back light on my car. I stuck a bit of gaffer tape over it and wasn’t going to bother claiming but she reported it to her insurance.

When I renewed my company (Elephant) loaded by £100ish due to the incident although they were still the cheapest option (don’t you just love online quote systems!!).

The 4x4 driver’s insurance (Direct Line) argued they shouldn’t pay because they wouldn’t load for a non fault incident and suggested I move to them but then quoted a figure that as way more than elephant even with the loading. The head elephant (Tanya?) kindly sent me a letter confirming the loading, process was repeated the following year and eventually I got £250 ish from direct line to cover 2 (maybe 3) years loadings.

It might be that because of the small sum involved they didn’t bother fighting but it seems to me that the loadings only occurred because of the accident and therefore should be recoverable from the third party along with all other consequential losses.

Similarly I’d argue that if someone loses 6 months premium because of a total loss payout which was someone else’s fault they should be able to recover cost that from the TP.

All to do with restoring you to the position you were in before the accident

diable

Ask them to claim the increase from the other party.

BLT_2

diable wrote: »

Ask them to claim the increase from the other party.

What for the next 5 years?