insurance premium refund dispute

andrewbarrett83

Hi,

I had an accident last year that was due to go to court next week to dispute liability. The other party has now admitted liability so I get my 5 years NCB back and £550 excess. However I had to renew my insurance earlier this year and only had 2 years NCB due to the ongoing dispute. I switched my insurance from Swiftcover to Aviva. Aviva are saying my refund in difference is pro-rated; just £75 not the £230 which was the difference between the 5 year NCB and 2 year NCB and the beginning of my policy.

My Swiftcover lawyer is saying they dont get involved in this and to contact Swiftcover but I'm not insured with them anymore. Surely I should be able to get this money back from the 3rd party insurance company. They have admitted liability and because it took them so long to admit that the pro-rata difference has increased.

Many thanks for any advice.

vaio

I’d say Aviva are wrong and the refund should be the difference from inception.

Look at it the other way, if you mistakenly told them you had more NCB than you actually had then when the error was discovered they would charge the extra from inception and not just from when the error was discovered.

In any event, as long as you get a letter from Aviva detailing the extra costs you have incurred then it’s all recoverable from the third party. Also recoverable is the cost of having a non fault claim on your record if Aviva are one of the companies that load for non fault claims.

When you took out the policy you got rated on a fault claim and x years NCB.

Aviva should now re-rate the policy from inception with a non fault and x+2 years NCB and refund the difference.

The third party has to put you back in the position you were in before the accident so if the non fault claim has cost you additional premium then they should pay that.