Confused over protected no claims discount.

fat-pudding

18 months ago I had an accident as a result of the accident I made a claim. At that point I had over 10 years with no claims lodged and a protected no claims bonus. At renewal time last year my insurer managed to beat all the quotes I could get so I renewed with them. This year I'm going to get new quotes as renewal time is just around the corner and my circumstances are about to change quite a bit so there is room for getting better quotes (hopefully!).

Anyhow, as my no claims bonus was protected how many years no claims bonus do I have for the purposes of comparison sites? Do I tell all insurers that I have 10 years NCB and disclose the accident or do I say I've got 1 years NCB? Different websites say different things and I'm quite frankly confused by this!

Quentin

You have all your NCD (assuming no claims this year).

You do need to disclose the claim (that is part of your driving claims/losses history, quite separate from your NCD)

fat-pudding

Thank you, that is what I had thought, just there seems to be so much conflicting advice out there.

adamc260

The awkward thing with NCD is some companies go up to 5, 6, 7, 8, 9 .... They all have their own scale

For the purposes of a claim though every company works on a scale of 1-5.

Mad eh?

lisyloo

Be careful.
Some companies start with max 5.
This isn't a problem from a discount perspective because the discount for 5 is very close to the discount for 9.
However it does make a difference if you have an accident.
Lose 2 years from 5 and you go down to 3.
Lose 2 years from 9 and you down to 7.
You might wish to find a company that let's you keep 9 or 10 rather than 5.

adamc260

lisyloo wrote: »

Lose 2 years from 5 and you go down to 3.
Lose 2 years from 9 and you down to 7.
.

Unfortunately that's not the case...

Every company works on a scale of 1-5 for the purpose of a claim else if you went to a company with 10 years you could have 2 claims and still walk away with 6 years NCD to another company?

It just doesn't work like that.

1-5 is the base discount for every company... anything ontop is a 'company promotion' type discount to attract customers like esure increase it by 1% per year up to a maximum of 5 years extra. (So 10 years NCD).

Using Admiral as an example

One claim
If you make one claim during your period of insurance you will lose two years No Claims Bonus. If you had five or more years No Claims Bonus you will have three years No Claims Bonus at renewal.

Two claims
If you make two claims during your period of insurance you will lose four years No Claims Bonus. If you had five or more years No Claims Bonus you will have one year at renewal.

Their quote system allows up to 9 years NCD.

lisyloo

Thank adam.

adamc260

lisyloo wrote: »

Thank adam.

No worries, had a lot of queries in my time of working for Insurers about NCD!

I wish everyone would just use 1-5.. would make life easier

InsideInsurance

The problem with NCD is that there is no industry standard and the fact there are commonalities but no standards probably makes things worse.

Whilst for the vast majority of insurers if you have 5+ NCD and have a claim you'll drop down to 3 years it may not be universal. Certainly some insurers have simply taken two years from what your total is so if you have 14 years NCD you'd go down to 12 (CGU's platinum service used to do this) and there is nothing to stop an insurer offering this again (though economically its unlikely to stack up)

fat-pudding

I just dug out my renewal from last year (insurer is Admiral) and they stated last year that I have 11 years NCB so I figure this year it's 12 years although they did say that the claim had still not been settled despite having paid me out and they'd paid for all the repairs to the other parties car (no injuries involved) hence why I was still a bit uncertain as when I queried this they gave me a fob off as the answer.

Quentin

You won't get a year added for the year in which the claim was made (if your claim was a "fault" one)