Motorbike insurance

mumsthe

My 20 year old son took out motorbike insurance with swinton on 5/08/2016. On 22/10/2016 he and his pillion were hit by a stolen car, thankfully they were not badly hurt.
The insurance was only third party fire and theft so he couldn't make a claim for his written off bike so he cancelled his insurance.
Swinton are now chasing him for the balance of his policy which he was paying by monthly installments, they have said that it is classed as a loan and he still has to pay it off.
My understanding is that if he had made a claim he would have to pay the balance but because he hasn't made a claim he doesn't have to keep paying.
Can anybody make it clear to me the ruling so that when I complain I can quote the right information. Thank you for any help, my son is high functioning autistic so gets very anxious when receiving letters and phone-calls constantly.

OnanTheBarbarian

It may be that even though no claim has been made by your son (due to the TPFT cover) there is a risk the pillion could try to make a claim against him or the offending motorist could allege the incident was your son't fault.

Because of this, usually insurers will make a "reserve" against the claim - which is a sum of money they ear mark as a possible outlay they may have to face. As it is uncertain if they will face any of these risks, they will want to keep the reserve there and therefore the claim may still be "open".

Usually this would mean no pro-rata refund agsinst the premium and therefore if separate finance was taken out to pay by instalments, because the finance house have not had any refund due to the open claim, they still want paying.

You may have a problem, but wait incase anyone else who actually works for an insurer comes along and may have some more advice.

Andy_L

mumsthe wrote: »

The insurance was only third party fire and theft so he couldn't make a claim for his written off bike so he cancelled his insurance.
Swinton are now chasing him for the balance of his policy which he was paying by monthly installments, they have said that it is classed as a loan and he still has to pay it off.

Paying insurance monthly is a loan agreement to finance the annual policy rather than a pay-as-you-go system. So yes, he is liable for some/all (depending on T&Cs) off the outstanding balance

What he should do is claim from the motor insurance bureau for his loses caused by the uninsured driver

https://www.gov.uk/compensation-victim-uninsured-driver