Car insurance following Non Fault Claim

Venus1981

A couple of years ago our car was hit whilst parked up at home (the neighbour forgot to put his handbrake on so it rolled down the hill and hit ours - no drivers involved). We claimed through 3rd party insurance. Our premiums went up from £660 a year to £1360 when doing comparison searches but to renew it was only £800, this made me think I was selecting the wrong option (accident - not at fault) as usually renewal prices are higher than on gocompare for example, anyone have any ideas?

Now we have a car each, and no longer have the car that was involved in the 'incident' do we have to declare as when googling it says

Pretty much all insurance providers will have a clause in their policy requiring you to declare any incidences involving your car in the last 5 years. If you don’t report something and your insurance provider finds out about it later, they could invalidate your policy. Honesty is always the best policy when it comes to your insurance.

It says 'involving your car' so as we don't own the car, do we not need to declare incident, also since we now have a car each who would take responsibility for the non fault claim, do we both need to declare on each of our separate policies?

Thank you in advance to anyone who can help!

fatrab

Yes, it was your car at the time! Whoever was the policy holder needs to declare it.

Aylesbury_Duck

Venus1981 wrote: »

A couple of years ago our car was hit whilst parked up at home (the neighbour forgot to put his handbrake on so it rolled down the hill and hit ours - no drivers involved). We claimed through 3rd party insurance. Our premiums went up from £660 a year to £1360 when doing comparison searches but to renew it was only £800, this made me think I was selecting the wrong option (accident - not at fault) as usually renewal prices are higher than on gocompare for example, anyone have any ideas?

Now we have a car each, and no longer have the car that was involved in the 'incident' do we have to declare as when googling it says

It says 'involving your car' so as we don't own the car, do we not need to declare incident, also since we now have a car each who would take responsibility for the non fault claim, do we both need to declare on each of our separate policies?

Thank you in advance to anyone who can help!

Yes you do have to declare it, as fatrab says. Otherwise, everyone would just sell and buy cars after an accident to avoid premium rises and you would inherit the claim history of any car you bought!

Your new insurer will ask, for each driver named on each car's policy, to notify them of any claims. You must notify them of this claim.

System

Yes you do have to declare it. Insurance companies check the MIB database and would find you'd had a claim and would either cancel your policy which will seriously up your insurance or not pay you out in the event of a claim.

Venus1981

Thanks guys, and to answer my own question - when doing a price comparison, I think I have figured out the question that increases my premium - at the point of selecting 'accident - not at fault' the next question is who was driving, I select 'other' as neither of us were in the vehicle at the time - whereas I should be selecting 'policy holder' this seems to reduce my premiums by around £500 therefore hopefully I will be able to get a competitive quote this year rather than just having to auto renew, does that sound right/legal?

fatrab

Yes sounds about right, the questions are fairly broad-covering and can't be specific to each event. They only want to know who was "in charge" of the vehicle so to speak. So it would be the policy holder/owner of the vehicle.

fatrab

You could always follow up the best quotation with a call to their customer services and explain the circumstances, it would be worth a shot.


I had a non fault in 2009 and it affected my premiums for 3 years. Some insurers see you as a higher risk because you've had a non fault, which is utter nonsense!

DoaM

fatrab wrote: »

Some insurers see you as a higher risk because you've had a non fault, which is utter nonsense!

Insurers would argue (with statistical evidence) that someone who has made a claim is more likely to make further claims within a reasonably short period, hence represents a higher risk.

fatrab

Yes I had someone from one of the insurance companies tell me that at the time, but it's still utter nonsense though isn't it? If you're not in your parked car and it gets hit, how can that make you more of a risk to be in another accident?

My case was a bit more complex, I was hit by debris falling from a wagon on the M6 - way before the days of in-car cctv. Took 9 months of arguing between 2 departments of the same insurance company to resolve it, thankfully in my favour.

Warwick_Hunt

fatrab wrote: »

Yes I had someone from one of the insurance companies tell me that at the time, but it's still utter nonsense though isn't it? If you're not in your parked car and it gets hit, how can that make you more of a risk to be in another accident?

My case was a bit more complex, I was hit by debris falling from a wagon on the M6 - way before the days of in-car cctv. Took 9 months of arguing between 2 departments of the same insurance company to resolve it, thankfully in my favour.

Statistically it’s not.

Warwick_Hunt

Tarambor wrote: »

Yes you do have to declare it. Insurance companies check the MIB database and would find you'd had a claim and would either cancel your policy which will seriously up your insurance or not pay you out in the event of a claim.

No need for them to do that as he’ll be on the CUE database.