Protected No Claims Bonus? Scam?

ragingroaduser

Does anyone realise that in regard to car insurance that by having and paying for Protected No Claims Bonus you could just be throwing money away? I received my renewal quote and was shocked to find a 40% premium increase. When I asked them to explain why the answer given was that I had had a claim in the last year. So it would seem that my No Claim discount was unaffected but at the same time there was a premium increase on the basis that I had made a claim. Errr! When I go onto explain that the 'claim' was in fact a new windscreen that had become cracked, which we all know is a separate optional section and not the main section of our motor policy cover it becomes even more curious as to why this would in spite of paying a higher premium for Protected No Claims it doesn't actually prevent a policy price increase. So why are we bothering to pay for extra cover? The insurance companies don't tell us this. I think we're all under the illusion that we've protected ourselves from price increases with this extra cover and we certainly weren't aware that a replacement windscreen affects the premium even though we pay extra for the cover and the first £60 or so pounds anyway. Let's get this one on the News and in the media. :mad:

Strider590

It's taking a long time for people to work this one out.... I've heard conversations regarding tailgating drivers and you always get one smart ar5e who says "I just slam on the brakes, it's their fault and doesn't affect my insurance", maybe once upon a time this was true, but not now!

bigjl

Your NCD is still there so they have done nothing wrong, my protected NCD is till 9 years but my premium went up this year by about 30%.

This isn't a scam, this is a national phenomenum, all our insurance costs have gone up.


The windscreen replacement shouldn't have affected your premium so I would look into that, however you have a protected discount, not protected premium, you get a reduction on the insurance quote, if this was 60% last year and is now still 60% then there is no issue to complain about, though under my insurance you go from 60% to 62.5%, yours will be similar.

Your biggest mistake is going for the renewal premium given by your current insurer, that is your fault not theirs.

My renewal premiums for my car and my wifes car where excessive, they wanted an extra £300 on hers, with no fault claims.

They wanted an extra £500 for my car with no claims.

I shopped around, using a price comparison website and got the cars insured ofr almost the same as last year.


There is no scam here that I can see, but feel free to point out something I may have misunderstood in your post.


Though a first post rant seems to be par for the course on here these days.


If you check carefully you will realise that your protected NCD is actually a premium that you pay to Insure your NCD.


I think the OP has completely misunderstood how NCD and protected NCD actually works.


And as far as the wondscreen claim putting up your premium, I have a feeling that the person you spoke to in the phone put that forward as a possible reason for your increased premium when you where having a moan up, rather than anything confirmed in writing.

I have only claimed for a windscreen twice and it made no difference either time, even though both where very expensive screens, one was a heated screen on a MK2 Mondeo, the other was a screen for a 2004 Subaru Legacy that was 6 months old at the time and no pattern part was made, so they had to buy it from Subaru for about £700, ouch!

dacouch

Sounds like Swiftcover or some other cheap and cheerful company

bigjl

dacouch wrote: »

Sounds like Swiftcover or some other cheap and cheerful company

You're not wrong there, perhaps a call centre based abroad may explain the lack of knowledge regarding what does or doesn't increase premiums.

Ionkontrol

I have 9 years no claims protected and by swapping companies my insurance has gone down by £50 this year.
Shop around peeps.

rev_henry

Honest John has a lot to say about this. You're paying to protect your DISCOUNT, not your BASE premium. If you have an accident, your base premium goes up as you're a greater risk, but you still get the same proportional discount. I think it is a bit of con really.

thenudeone

There are two separate things going on.
Your premium is first calculated based on age, driving history, and claims / accident history; then the NCD is knocked off.
Normally if you have an accident, you suffer on both counts, i.e. you have a worse claims history AND a lower or no NCD. If market prices are rising significantly, as they are now, it will appear like a triple whammy!

With protected NCD, however, your NCD % stays the same but statistically you are still a more risky driver because you have had a recent accident, so your premium will still rise even if premiums (premia?) in the market generally, aren't rising.
But, new insurers probably may not honour NCD years that would have been lost had they not been protected, so the value of protection isn't as much as you might think.
A rule of thumb I've seen is not to pay more than 10% extra for protected NCD or 20% extra for guaranteed NCD.

dacouch

rev_henry wrote: »

Honest John has a lot to say about this. You're paying to protect your DISCOUNT, not your BASE premium. If you have an accident, your base premium goes up as you're a greater risk, but you still get the same proportional discount. I think it is a bit of con really.

A lot of people buy it for peace of mind, it also allows you to claim for the smaller claims that you might not claim for if you did not have protected no claims eg someone damaging your car in a car park and driving off.

Protected No Claims really saves money if you are unfortunate enough to have a few claims in a shortish period.

For instance if your premium without no claims was say £1000 and you received 60% discount for maximum no claims and the insurer loads the premium by say 20% for each fault claim.

So one claim without pncb would mean a renewal of £600 (Assuming 50% for 3 years ncd). The same renewal with pncb would £480.

If you do the same calculation with two claims in say the space of 24 months the renewal with pncb would be £1008 but with pncb would be £576.

With three claims it would be £1728 without pncb but with pncb would be £691.

This is assuming the loads for claims stay at 20%, they are added concurrently and the insurer allows 2 pncb "lives" and then reverts to maximum. It is only an example of potential costings and could vary up or down depending on the insurer and / or their no claims bonus scale.

Another advantage of pncb, is insurers generally regard all claims as being fault until they have recovered their money from the other party. If you have a renewal in between it is normally on the premium with reduced no claims. You then have to recover the difference from the insurer / current insurer as and when they or you recover outlay and no claims is reinstated. With pncb the renewal would be invited on the premium with maximum no claims (Although they may take one of the pncb "lives" while the claim is being sorted)

Gloomendoom

I'm sure there was a thread on here recently raising the issue of windscreen claims increasing premiums. IIRC it wasn't even a windscreen replacement but a supposedly 'free' chip repair that pushed the premium up at renewal time.

Tucker

Protected NCD has always been a waste of money and in practice rarely helps when you have claimed as other insurers normally will not honour it.

It's there for those that buy overpriced warranties or cover incase some underground pipe leaks.