Does NO claim made become a CLAIM on home insurance

alexandr

Hello. Sorry for the long text below, but I like to be accurate!
My wife and I have held (and still do hold) home insurance continually for 35 years at this property where we have lived continually and have only made 2 claims since 1979.
1993, theft of personal belongings, £1000 and a cracked window whilst decorating, around £50, around 1998?
For years we also owned a second property around 0.5 mile away that was never fully completed building wise, was totally uninhabitable and NEVER occupied. Insurance was always difficult and expensive with this other house because of this being declared with all insurers. Only Fire, Lightning, Explosion and Aircraft cover being available. However, this DID NOT cover the incidents that I declared voluntarily.
Finally in Feb 2012 the insurers declined renewal due to 2 break ins and 1 damaged window pane (2011) in a spate of trouble within this last year insured period and also because it was still incomplete and totally unoccupied. Other than damage caused, no other loss was sustained here.
NO claim has EVER been made in all the years I owned this property, just notification to insurers of any incidents.
In fact, these last 3 incidents are the only ones that have occurred in the past 5 years of ANY insurance policy I hold, cars or existing home. Insurers always ask questions concerning last 5 years about any "claims". Although not a "claim" and not covered with my FLEA policy anyway, I did report all the incidents. I am an honest person and do realise full disclosure of such details should always be made to insurers if you are unsure whether relevant or not.
We sold this property "as is, incomplete, uninsured" in Feb 2013.

In October 2013, our EXISTING home policy was changed from NFU after around 20 continual years business with them (because of around 23% "flood risk" price hike in the district) to using a personally recommended broker locally. Verbally he made nothing of these incidents regarding the other house as they were not actually at our own home that we were insuring. Cover was then obtained at a good premium.
This year at renewal time, I tried NFU again for a quote, just to see how much. They refused to even quote me. The reason they said was my postcode. This however is about 0.5 mile from their offices and at about the same ground level, and still in the same flood risk colour band!

So, I went back to my broker again. Following a renewal invitation of my last year’s policy at about 10-15% increase, he started to look elsewhere.
Now, my broker is trying a different company and this time has included in the proposal my repeated statement about the other "claims".
This has now flagged up as THREE CLAIMS in FIVE YEARS and my proposal is now being referred to the underwriters. I am still waiting for a reply.
What concerns me now is that the other property we owned that had all these incidents, but NO claims may have now put me on the National Database “blacklist” for our own family home? Personally I also feel that this may even be why NFU didn't want my business?
Any advice appreciated please.….
Thanks, aleks

Quentin

Your reported incidents will have gone on the usual database - not a blacklist.


Insurers do usually ask about claims and losses etc.


Your 3 incidents you reported should have been noted as incidents/losses, and you do need to disclose these if asked.

InsideInsurance

If its a local broker is it an advised sale?

Ultimately it comes down to the question the insurer is asking. Some as about claims others ask about incidents whether claimed for or not. Traditionally Home was only interested in the former but increasingly they are switching to the later.

The Broker should know if the insurers he is approaching for you only want to know about actual claims or if they want to know about incidents and send the appropriate information

alexandr

Quentin, thank you, that is reassuring.
InsideInsurance. The proposal is with an alternative insurer, I think that is what you ask? There is a tick box about any "claims" (I think!) on this form. I have not seen it. Not sure if last years form for our current policy had the same question, (don't know if claim or incident either) but broker did not think the other property was relevant at that time.
So, for my future reference, if asked about any CLAIM, is an INCIDENT or LOSS not needed to be declared? Also, a LOSS, who is that referring to, the insurer's LOSS or MY personal LOSS if I paid for any damage without claiming? Incident seems self explanatory though.
I suppose I should also try to clarify these 3 terms with any insurer if not already defined in T&C?
Thanks, aleks

InsideInsurance

alexandr wrote: »

I suppose I should also try to clarify these 3 terms with any insurer if not already defined in T&C?

Legally, its up to the insurer to tell you up front. If there is nothing in the help text etc the question should be answered using dictionary definitions of the words.

Until recently things operated purely on the principles of utmost good faith with there being a general requirement for the proposer/insured to offer up relevant information. Whilst this is good in principle it has lead to a lot of arguments over if the insured is sufficiently knowledgeable to know what is relevant and not. Hence now if insurers want to know they must explicitly ask.

If you look at the recent FOS article on underinsurance for example there is a case where the person had £100,000 of jewelry but when completing the form they were asked "how much cover do you want for jewelry?" and they answered £10,000. An event occurred and all/ most the jewelry was lost. The insurer initially tried to decline the claim saying they were under insured by a factor of 10 and they would have never offered cover had they known the value of jewelry being kept in the property. The FOS however made the insurer pay out up to the £10k limit as the question had been how much cover do you want NOT how much jewelry do you own.

You need to answer the question as its stated, so in the cases of losses, incidents or claims it normally explicitly states You and so the question on losses would be have you suffered any losses not the insurer but every form is different and the questions must be answered as they are presented.

Belts and braces would be to ask the insurer but then you have no excuse if something goes wrong

alexandr

Sort of sorted now.
My broker managed to arrange renewal cover for us with our existing insurer, but at an increase that was not unacceptable.
He did make it clear that if the policy were to lapse, then our insurer would not be prepared to quote. So, we paid up this afternoon.

Getting back to the start of my problem, changing insurer because of flood risk cover price hike, It does seem that the "flood risk" problem is now taken into consideration by most big name insurers. We live in South Lincolnshire and the Environment Agency map shows high risk from approx the A1 in the West acros to the East Coast around here. 100s of thousands of homes will very soon find insurance difficult if they try to change insurers.
It does seem at the moment that most insurers will renew existing policies but not accept new business in these "high risk" areas. BTW, we were last flooded in 1947 and soon after then the flood defences were considerably upgraded around here in the early 1950s.
Anyone using online sites to hop around and save money for the best quote could possibly find themselves in deep water. No pun intended! Be warned!
Thank you both for taking the time to reply to my initial question.
Kind regards, aleks