Legal expenses claim

Rocketgirl91

We took up house insurance including legal expenses 1 April. We just opened a claim for a matter that started in early April and (tried to resolved it informally but it didn’t quite work). Insurance is assessing if they will approve it to go further and they asked for some documents etc which is fine. However, they asked for details of last legal expenses policy we had before we took up this one. I’m a bit confused as I can’t see why that would be relevant. Any ideas?

eddddy

Possibly because it may be an indicator of a fraudulent claim.

If you had no legal expenses insurance previously, then you took out legal expenses insurance on 1st April, then you almost immediately had a legal issue - it might be that you took out insurance because you know that a legal issue was immanent (or the legal issue had already started).


But if you had legal expenses insurance up until 1st April (with somebody else), that's less likely to be the case.

davidwatts

Firstly, why worry about it? Just give them the information, be it you've never had it before or the details of the previous insurer and period covered. It's a reasonable request and nothing to worry about.

The most likely reason they might want it is the proximity of the "incident date" of early April and the cover start date of 1st April. If it was discovered that the cause of the dispute started earlier then it might actually be a matter for the previous insurer. (LEI won't cover an incident that predates the policy start date.)

They may also want to check your previous claims history, particularly to verify that this event hasn't been the subject of a previous claim.

davidwatts

eddddy wrote: »

Possibly because it may be an indicator of a fraudulent claim.

If you had no legal expenses insurance previously, then you took out legal expenses insurance on 1st April, then you almost immediately had a legal issue - it might be that you took out insurance because you know that a legal issue was immanent (or the legal issue had already started).


But if you had legal expenses insurance up until 1st April (with somebody else), that's less likely to be the case.

Good point, though that wouldn't make it a fraudulent claim in my opinion. I doubt there would be any questions relating to previous or pending legal disputes as part of the home insurance application process. They may well want to establish that the issue doesn't predate the cover but I'd say that taking out LEI cover when you believe that an issue could arise soon is certainly not fraudulent.

Quentin

You are never covered for "issues that arose" prior to the cover starting

As advised you have no detriment by complying with their request

If the issue arose prior to cover starting then expect them to reject the claim

Rocketgirl91

Thank you all.
We found out about the issue early April and we also tried to resolve it informally, but it didn’t quite work unfortunately. It’s not that we claimed straight away.
I was just surprised by the question. If they were concerned about issue starting before (which it didn’t) they wouldn’t need that info, they could just say sorry, not covered. That’s all.

Chickenlips

They are probably looking at the probability of this pre-dating your cover. If you had previous insurance, they may be less likely to be concerned about this. If you had no previous cover, I'd expect them to do a lot more digging.

Generally, policyholders provide what we aso as they have nothing to hide. Those that won't tend to be treated with suspicion as it is unusual to ignore policy terms (provide all information reasonably requested). If there are any problems or things you need to tell them I would do so now.

Each insurer will have a different opinion on what they consider to be fraud. It is unclear if they would, if this incident predated the policy and no cover existed prior, consider these actions to be fraudulent.

People make mistakes and poor decisions. Where someone is open an honest with me when issues crop up, I tend to be more lenient and make recommendations to the insurance company along the same lines.