Insurance fronting - what would you do?

rev_henry

frothey wrote: »

A lot of insurance co's will give named drivers the NCB now.

A bit of jealousy in this thread - who's saying they've bought a souped up sports model and he is driving like a t**t? A lot of small cars can look sporty but have little 1.0's under the bonnet - maybe the mum just wants her son in something modern, safe and economical, after all if all 17yr olds are going to crash, better to have them in something new than a 20yr old banger.....

Not really. Better to batter a battered banger a bit more than scrape a brand new car which will cost a fortune to fix.

motorguy

Its a Corsa that looks like a VXR but has a 1.2 litre engine.

He also has it lowered, and again i dont think hes told the insurance company.

I dont begrudge the guy the car, and he doesnt seem to be driving it like a !!!! or anything but it does unsettle me that my son is out in that car, when technically, it shouldnt be on the road.

But as people have said, its really none of my business, and the only person who will be affected is the guy himself if - god forbid - he has an accident.

jaydeeuk1

I insured myself as a named driver on my car with mum as named driver for first 3 years (parents were happy to go along with this). Was easy enough to get away with as we had one company car, parents car and mine. No way was I paying £3500 3rd party on a crappy £200 1.6 car, but £600 or so was much more reasonable.

If I was to ever be pulled over (and I was a couple of times), police checked insurance, told them its my mums car (bought in her name) just borrowing it, and jobs a good'n.

As long as you don't chav it up, keep it standard there is no way imo that insurance or police could accuse you of fronting.

Money I saved over the years, I bought myself a brand new car last year.

Cue lots of angry tears from people who've just paid £4k

Nilrem

Jay you'd be surprised at how easy it can be for the insurance companies to get enough proof to invalidate your insurance if they have a reason to look - things like asking your neighbours who usually drives what car, asking who drives the other cars etc.

For example I'm assuming you weren't insured on the company car, so that means your parents then had 3 cars in for which they were the main drivers, the insurance companies find out which ones were used to get to work in etc (possibly by asking neighbours or people at work what cars they used).
Not chaving it up makes it harder for them, but they can be pretty persistent and quite willing to spend a fair bit of money on checking it out very thoroughly if there is suspicion and they are facing a big bill due to a crash, and they only have to prove it on the balance of probabilities for civil courts.

Bare in mind that they will have seen cases similar to your many many times over the years, so will be aware of the chance, and many people do trip themselves up when asked by the loss adjusters/investigators "how often do you use the car", "how do you get to work/university" etc.

JQ.

Jaydee - I think you're missing the point about why we all have insurance. It's all about when it goes horribly wrong and therefore being accountable for our own actions. What happens when you end up crashing into a Ferrari or putting a family of 4 in wheelchairs for the rest of their lives. It's really only at that point that the insurance company will realistically investigate fronting. You or your family will then be paying that bill for the rest of your life.

I have house contents insurance - not because I have to but because I would struggle to replace the entire contents of my house should it burn to the ground.

You think you've saved money, I think you've actually wasted £600 a year paying for insurance that would be unllikely to pay out in a major claim. The other people may have paid a fortune for insurance but at least they were actually insured. You should have just driven round with no insurance and saved the £600 you were chucking down the drain.

frothey

rev_henry wrote: »

Not really. Better to batter a battered banger a bit more than scrape a brand new car which will cost a fortune to fix.

Nope, still rather be in an accident in a new car than an old one - especially as if this thread is to be believed, when a young male driver has an accident it tends to be big a one......

rev_henry

frothey wrote: »

Nope, still rather be in an accident in a new car than an old one - especially as if this thread is to be believed, when a young male driver has an accident it tends to be big a one......

Hmm, there's arguments either way. New cars are safer but cost £££ to fix if you crash them. Older ones vice versa.

Lum

jaydeeuk1 wrote: »

As long as you don't chav it up, keep it standard there is no way imo that insurance or police could accuse you of fronting.

pgilc1 wrote: »

Its a Corsa that looks like a VXR but has a 1.2 litre engine.

He also has it lowered, and again i dont think hes told the insurance company.

So it's a barried Corsa then? :rotfl:

This is going to end badly for them, no-one else mind, if he does crash it.

dacouch

A few bits of information on fronting.

Insurers are pretty good at discovering fronted cars, the time they may investigate it is when a claim is reported to them.

They have quite a few ways of discovering whether a car is fronted or not, these include checking the name on the V5, requesting a copy of the purchase receipt (It's surprising how many of these are in the child's name), looking at how many cars are in the family eg the company car and mother having a car as well as the young drivers car would ring alarm bells as opposed to there only being one or two cars in the family, a modified car would ring alarm bells, an accident at or near the child's work or college would also warrant investigation which may include finding out whether the child has a parking permit for the work / college car park. They may also do a cognitive interview on the parent and / or child, some Insurers even use lie detectors to assist with the interviewing over the telephone.

The implications of a fronted policy are that the third party claim will normally be paid but often the policy holder's damage will be denied, the Insurers then have the option of recovering their outlay to the third party from the policyholder which being an individual has the outside chance of them losing their home. Young drivers claims have a higher prevalence of injury claims with some claims running into millions. There was a report of Admiral (I think) taking a parent to court for £60000 for a fronted policy after a claim.

There is the outside chance (Very unlikely) that the police could prosecute for fraud as the policy may have been obtained fraudulenty by giving miss leading information.

Should the Insurer discover the fronting they will also void the policy from inception, this then means the parent has on their record (Currently for ever) that they have had a policy cancelled) This makes it very difficult (Extremely expensive) to obtain most types of Insurance including motor, life, home and sometime business insurance.

Fronting does affect other people in that as the Insurer is not collecting a premium that reflects the risk of a young driver, the ultimate costs get distributed around the rest of their policyholders so in effect it puts up their premiums.

When you explain the possible implications to a parent of fronting the majority decide against it.

P.S I would be very surprised if the person the OP is refering to has declared the modifications to the Insurer, there is a good chance that this would give them the chance to void the policy on it's own. It's unlikely the Ombudsman would term the non disclosure as innocent / inadvertent and there is also the chance the parent would say the child did the modifications as an excuse for the non disclosure which would add evidence to the fronting and also the chance to discover from the receipts that the modifications were paid for by the young driver...

whatmichaelsays

A friend of my son got a brand new car as soon as he turned 17. It wasnt the entry level model, so it wasnt among the minimum grouped cars.

He passed his test and went to get insurance. Tried everywhere and the cheapest quote was £7000. Thus his mother now has it insured in her name with him as a named driver for £1800

Now this is clearly fronting - apart from anything his mum has a sports car already and i'm 99% certain the car is taxed in the sons name, so if he crashes the insurance will pick up on this right away, plus he takes it to school every day, so there'll be no evidence of the mother using it for her work etc, etc.

My son is out in the car a lot with this guy.

There is only a small handful of people who know its insured in his mums name.

Should i just be minding my own business here? What would you do?

You see that number on your renewal document? The one with the '£' in front of it?

Yeah, as much as £40 of that is because of prats like this.