Overlapping car insurance

derekpotter

Hi,


This concerns UK car insurance.

I have just cancelled the renewal on my wife's car and she has taken out insurance with a different company. No problems with any of that but the two policies overlap by one day.


I need to know whether this is actually illegal - some people are very dogmatic that it is and others say no it's fine but it may cause problems in the event of a claim.


Please - I am only interested in the legal side, can anyone state categorically whether it is legal or not? I'm not worried about making a claim, the car will not be driven on the day of overlap but I don't want legal problems with either "no insurance" (double= nill!) or needing to fill in a SORN for the one day.

rs65

It is not illegal to have two policies on one car.

forgotmyname

Highly illegal, but the punishment is to be deported to a hot country with £1,000,000 of spending money and a scantily clad member of the opposite sex will pamper to your every need.

Phone them up and change the day one cancels or cnage the day the other one starts?

thenudeone

rs65 wrote: »

It is not illegal to have two policies on one car.

^^^^ This ^^^^

But remember that you cannot use the same NCD on two policies at the same time (even for one day).

forgotmyname

I prefer my version Maybe they should make it illegal, i need a holiday

Pincher

Strictly speaking, the old insurance needs to finish the whole year, before they can give the extra year of NCB. If you terminate a policy at say 9 months, you don't get X.75 year of NCB. If they are really nasty, they could refuse to give the year of NCB because it's one day short.


I had the opposite recently. I was trading-in a car whose insurance was expiring on the 27th of March, but the new car I ordered was not ready for delivery. I didn't want to start a new policy, so I let it end, and handed the old car in for trade-in early.


The new car turns up eventually, and I sent the proof of NCB to the new insurer, who then wrote back saying the proof was not satisfactory! They say there is a gap between the old policy and the new policy, and I could have had an accident during the gap!? They accepted that I had no car to have an accident in eventually, but it was a bit hairy, because the next cheapest insurance was over £300 more. :eek:


Just to shut them up, it's better to have the two policies join up seamlessly. I live in dread of ever having an accident during the overlap. It's two sets of forms for a start. If the claim is large, god knows whether they will haggle with each other for how long.