Third Party Insurer Not Responding to Requests for Settlement

sueh6

Hi

My son was involved in an accident in May of 2014 with an articulated lorry. Even though the lorry was on a weight restricted road, due to a lack of independent witnesses we have had to concede that we are unable to progress any further unless on a 50/50 basis. I had a letter in October from my insurance company advising that they would be seeking 50% of the cost of the claim, including the excess (the car is mine). Throughout this whole process the 3rd party insurer has not been proactive and only advised they would accept a 50/50 claim after months of chasing. They are now not responding to my insurance company at all and although they have sent a final chase today (apparently they have 14 days to respond) I'm really not confident that anything will happen. My insurance company have advised that they will pass the case to their solicitors if no response is received.

Does anyone have any experience of this situation? My excess was not insignificant - do I stand any chance of getting half of it back? Can the 3rd party simply ignore requests to settle the claim?

Many thanks in anticipation......

dacouch

Is it a UK Insurer and UK based haulage company?

InsideInsurance

Insurers remain terrible at sending masses of post to each other, rarely bothering to check its the right address/ reference number etc whilst sitting in their own office with a massive backlog of post to process of which a good proportion are chasers.

Dealing with commercial policies is always slower than personal lines, the excess for a company is not as big a priority as a person. You pick up the phone to your insurer where as their insurer writes to the broker who writes to the companies insurance manager who writes to the drivers manager who contacts the driver and everything then goes back up the same long chain.

If there is an international aspect to the claim its 10 times worse.

The insurers will issue, it will be settled out of court.

sueh6

dacouch wrote: »

Is it a UK Insurer and UK based haulage company?

Yes, it is.

AdrianC

No, you won't get 50% of your excess back. Your excess is your contribution towards your insurer's outlay.

What "50/50" means is that both you (the person driving under your policy) and the other party have both been found partially liable, so both parties pay their excess, take an NCB hit, and have to declare an "at fault" in the future.

sueh6

AdrianC wrote: »

No, you won't get 50% of your excess back. Your excess is your contribution towards your insurer's outlay.

Totally confused now as my letter from my insurance company clearly states that is what they have requested along with 50% of their costs.

dacouch

AdrianC wrote: »

No, you won't get 50% of your excess back. Your excess is your contribution towards your insurer's outlay.

What "50/50" means is that both you (the person driving under your policy) and the other party have both been found partially liable, so both parties pay their excess, take an NCB hit, and have to declare an "at fault" in the future.

Fortunately for the OP your incorrect.

50/50 means that each Insurer pays 50% of the other parties losses, this applies to the Insurers losses and the policyholders. So the OP is able to recover 50% of their excess cost from the other Insurer.

You're correct that each party in 50/50 accident has their no claims bonus affected

dacouch

Sue do you know that it's the other Insurer dragging their heels, I ask as it's not unusual for people to be in your situation and thinking it's the other Insurer when in fact it's their own Insurer being lackadaisical with their chasing but blaming it on the other Insurer when their own client asks what's happening.

InsideInsurance sums it up well.

If you know the claims reference or the other parties policy number it's not that difficult to ring the other Insurers to ask what's happening. You would be surprised the amount of people who ring the other Insurer in your situation to be told we're waiting for documents from your Insurer. If this happens you can just fax or email over a copy of your receipt for paying the excess and they send it out a few days later.

mcjordi

sueh6 wrote: »

Totally confused now as my letter from my insurance company clearly states that is what they have requested along with 50% of their costs.

you get back 50% of your claim and uninsured losses.. ie excess

sueh6

dacouch wrote: »

Sue do you know that it's the other Insurer dragging their heels, I ask as it's not unusual for people to be in your situation and thinking it's the other Insurer when in fact it's their own Insurer being lackadaisical with their chasing but blaming it on the other Insurer when their own client asks what's happening.

Oh absolutely agree. My own insurer needs constant chasing and I'm constantly giving them deadlines.....they're rubbish. That said the 3rd party is equally as bad and as a previous poster has said just takes so long to respond to anything.

straighttalker

AdrianC wrote: »

No, you won't get 50% of your excess back. Your excess is your contribution towards your insurer's outlay.

What "50/50" means is that both you (the person driving under your policy) and the other party have both been found partially liable, so both parties pay their excess, take an NCB hit, and have to declare an "at fault" in the future.

OP, as has stated by others, this poster is WRONG!

If liability has been agreed on a 50/50 basis, you will be able to recover 50% of your excess due to the fact that the driver of your vehicle was 50% at fault for the accident. Your insurer will recover 50% of their outlay from the third party insurer.

If the third party insurer isn't responding, your Insurer could instruct their own legal team to issue proceedings against the third party driver for recovery of their outlay. If you ask nicely, they may include recovery of your excess too in the proceedings.