Admiral cancelled my car insurance and asking for £10k from me for third party costs!!

dacouch

Aretnap wrote: »

As the person who took out the policy, you are the person responsible for supplying accurate information to the insurer.- and the person responsible for the consequences if you don't.

However as you note, you are only required to take reasonable care to ensure that the information you provide is accurate. If you provide inaccurate information inadvertently, despite taking all reasonable steps to ensure it was accurate, then the insurer should not void your policy - even if they would not have covered you had they known the full facts. Showing that you provided the false information innocently is not easy as most misrepresentations will involve an element of carelessness at least, but it can be done in some circumstances - a classic example being a person who was unaware that the second hand car they bought had been modified.


If you can persuade the ombudsman that you provided the false information because you were mislead by someone you had good reason to trust, they might class it as innocent non-disclosure and order Admiral to cover the claim. I imagine that they will be sceptical that you had no idea about your husband's convictions, but the process is free to you so you have nothing to lose by trying.



The question relates to "convictions", not to "points on your UK licence"; it's inconceivable that your husband didn't know about the convictions so it sounds like he was hoping that the fact that he had a non-EU licence would mean that he could get away with lying about them. Your task is to persuade the Ombudsman that he did this by himself and that you had no reason to suspect that he wasn't being honest when he told you that he had no convictions. This is probably your only realistic hope of getting the voidance overturned.


I've done some searching on Ombudsman decisions in the hope of finding similar cases to see which way yours might to but haven't found anything similar - maybe someone else will have more luck?

http://www.ombudsman-decisions.org.uk/

If the Insurer genuinely would not have offered cover had they been aware of the undisclosed convictions, they are perfectly entitled to void the policy. This is laid down in the Insurance Consumer Law

cannugec5

I can't help but wonder why you would have an ex as a named driver. Why does he not have his own insurance policy - oh perhaps because he knows they would not offer him any cover?

Sorry, I know this is not helpful.

Aretnap

dacouch wrote: »

If the Insurer genuinely would not have offered cover had they been aware of the undisclosed convictions, they are perfectly entitled to void the policy. This is laid down in the Insurance Consumer Law

Only if the consumer failed to take reasonable care to avoid a misrepresentation. See Consumer Insurance Act sections 2(2) and 4(1). The question of whether the insurer would have offered cover only comes into the equation once the lack of reasonable care has been established.

A real example: Customer buys a car second hand. It has been modified in a way which would not have been obvious to the average driver. Customer declares that it has no modifications, makes a claim and the insurer discovers the modifications. Insurer would not have offered cover had it known about the modifications and voids the policy. Ombudsman upholds customer's complaint as the customer cannot reasonably be said to have shown a lack of care, orders the insurer to reverse the cancellation, pay the claim, and pay compensation to the customer for good measure. Ombudsman decision reference number DRN1026481, though I could just as easily quote a number of similar examples.

My argument is that the OP's situation is analogous to the above - if someone she had reason to trust told her that he had no convictions then she has not shown any lack of care by declaring that he had no convictions, and the non-disclosure is innocent rather than careless. I accept that my argument isn't unanswerable - it raises questions of credibility (did she really have no inkling that he'd been convicted?) and the standard of care required (how much checking of what her ex tells her should she be expected to do?) - but I don't think it's inherently absurd either.

Afsana

He isn’t going to contribute if he isn’t legally liable.

I will take it to court. Don’t everything I can under the Consumers (disclosure and repe

billy2shots

Afsana wrote: »

He isn’t going to contribute if he isn’t legally liable.

Sounds like a nice bloke, no wonder he's now an Ex.

Sea_Shell

Will he admit to the ombudsman, or in court should it get there, that he lied to you about his convictions when asked?

Aretnap

Sea_Shell wrote: »

Will he admit to the ombudsman, or in court should it get there, that he lied to you about his convictions when asked?

It would certainly help if he was willing to do this. However can thought - if Admiral have said that they'll record the cancellation against his name rland not yours then it sounds like that have already accepted that he mislead you and that you were genuinely unaware of his convictions. I suggest you make that point in your car to the Ombudsman.