insurance - notification of accidents and Q database

zerocool

This is a long story which I will keep brief; I have a outstanding FSA complaint with Swiftcover but I'm still baffled by one piece of info which nobody can seem to answer officially.

A friend hit my car whilst my car was parked in a carpark, I (as I believe I'm required to by law) informed my insurer and they said they would take it as information only and not record a claim as I had agreed to settle man to man. They did record a claim, and on the Q database my new insurer tells me is a open claim which is unresolved, not what Swiftcover say they recorded.

Swiftcover are working on changing the data to the correct information and acknowledged that they have recorded it wrong on the Q database but its correct on their system.

According to them they should have opened a claim, and closed a claim as "information only - closed and £0 claim".

My questions arise to the database entry. It seems impossible for me as a consumer to inform my insurance about a potential issue without them opening a "claim". Therefore if you don't claim on your insurance your still penalized as having made a "claim".

This issue arose from them inputting incorrect data in but even if they had done it correctly I would have still got a claim against my records which will in turn increase my policy costs. My new insurer is getting back to me regarding just how much of a policy difference this is going to cost me but I'm fuming.

I did the right thing, and I'm being unfairly charged for a none-claim in some sort of terminology trap designed to catch unwitting consumers.

The FSA believe my complaint is valid and they have opened a issue but its in my hands to process the issue unless it breaches 8 weeks when its then a ombudsman process.

Nobody can tell me if Swiftcover "have to record a claim" even though no claim has been made, if they are going beyond what they are meant to do, if this is unfair treatment, if this is not what the Q database is designed for, if Swiftcover should have a way of reporting a potential issue without registering it.

It seems to me when insurers ask you: "have you had any accidents", I should answer yes, and if they say "have you had any claims" then I should say no, but thats not how the insurers use the database systems to record information.

Your thoughts and advice appreciated.

hugoshavez

zerocool wrote: »

It seems to me when insurers ask you: "have you had any accidents", I should answer yes, and if they say "have you had any claims" then I should say no, but thats not how the insurers use the database systems to record information.

Absoloutely right.

In terms of motor insurance there are really two categories of incident that are important:

Incidents that cost an insurer money (fault claim):
Accidents where you are at fault
Accidents where you are not at fault BUT for whatever reason your insurer can't recover their outlay
Thefts, malicious damage where your insurer can't recover their outlay


Incidents that don't cost an insurer money:
A reported accident where no claim is pursued
An accident/theft where the insurer recovers their full outlay

Your insurer will use both lots of information to calculate your next year's premium. They're perfectly entitled to upload details to CUE, even if no claim was pursued, and another insurer is entitled to use the info to decide whether to cover you, and if so, what to charge.

They SHOULD, as I'm sure the FOS have said, get the info on CUE right. ie an incident notified for information only shouldn't be logged as an outstanding claim. Shouldn't be difficult for them to fix though.