No claims bonus capped at 9 years?

elvisrock

I have recently changed car insurance provider. I went to my former insurance company with 9 years' no claims discount, stayed with them for a year, and then changed - giving me 10 years of no claims. Having left them, they have now issued me with documentation stating that I still only have 9 years? I have spoken to them and they are apparently sending me another letter stating I now have 10 years NCD, because some insurance companies allow you to state more years than 9.
This is the first time I have been made aware of insurers capping NCB at 9 years - it now makes me wonder how many times this has occurred when changing provider; whether I should be on more than 10. Will have to work this out.
Are insurance companies capping our no claims bonus and will this have any bearing on future quotes?

BlueC

A lot of insurers cap it at 5 years, and for all insurers it makes little or no difference to your policy cost between say 5 years and 10 years. For example (made up numbers for illustration):

1 year = 10% discount
2 years = 20%
3 years = 30%
4 years = 40%
5 years = 50%
6 years = 55%
7 years = 56%
8 years = 57%
9 years = 58%
10 years = 59%
1000 years = 59%

Also, remember the discount is not applied to the whole policy cost, just a proportion of it so the value of an extra year of NCB can be very very little or none.

In summary: don't lose any sleep over it.

Quentin

Many "cap" at 5 years.

If you move to one of these, and are concerned about ending up with 5 years, make sure they will issue you the correct NCD when your policy is up before you buy it!

scooby75

NCD is a con.

It does not matter how many years they give you - it is the base price that they charge, plus the discount (as a percentage or a monetary figure) that they give you that counts. That as well what other insurers will give you.

I had this conversation a number of times when I worked in insurance. It basically involved me agreeing to give 20 years NCD on a premium that was vastly inflated to cover the difference.

scheming_gypsy

BlueC wrote: »

A lot of insurers cap it at 5 years, and for all insurers it makes little or no difference to your policy cost between say 5 years and 10 years. For example (made up numbers for illustration):


In summary: don't lose any sleep over it.

it might not make much difference on the premium but it will on your next one if you have a crash. If you lose two years after a crash when you're capped at 5 years, you're down to 3 years. One more crash and you lose almost everything.
If you keep the right numbers you don't lose everything.

tim9966

Yes the same thing happened to me. I should have 10 years NCB, but it still says I have 9 years.

redux

scheming_gypsy wrote: »

it might not make much difference on the premium but it will on your next one if you have a crash. If you lose two years after a crash when you're capped at 5 years, you're down to 3 years. One more crash and you lose almost everything.
If you keep the right numbers you don't lose everything.

Some of those policies lose more years for the first claim, so if it's on 6 or more years then on the first accident it would roll back to 4.

Quentin

Most policies will drop you down to 3 years ncd after a fault claim irrespective of how many years you had at the start of the policy (unless it's protected)

Check the policy conditions to see how a claim affects your ncd.

Sam03_2

Hello Folks, This is my first post on this site...

I have a similar issue to the original question. I moved to an online-only insurer in Feb-12 and uploaded 12 years proof of NCD, but they came back and said they would only recognise 9 years.

This time, I have moved insurers and received an email from the previous company stating that I had 9 years NCD.

I have 2 questions about this:

1) Should the online insurer have stated that I have 10 years NCD (9 years + 1 year) ?

2) As my 12 year proof of NCD is only 13 months old, could I send that as proof to my new insurer or should it be my most recent proof(I heard the NCD is valid for up to 2 years)?

Thanks.

forgotmyname

Unless the new insurer offer discounts for no claims over 9 years then its pointless bothering with it.

Send them the previous policy renewal and they may wonder why the gap of exactly 1 year and a quick check on the database may get them asking why you didnt use that renewal.

Send them both. But are they offering a bigger discount?

Most companies on the comparison sites offer no price change between 5 and 9 years. So makes no difference.

nickcc

I have 21 years without making a claim but still only get 9 years NCD and this is with the IAM insurer. Every year I obtain quotes from various comparison sites and all seem to only allow 9 years NCD.