No Claims Bonus Query

PFMC84

I need to renew my car insurance and yet again the insurer I am with is charging me an extortionate price all of a sudden and cover is available elsewhere for less than half the price. The only query I have is that my no claims discount document says I have 4 years of no claims, which I am assuming is because I have been with my current company for 4 years. But I've never claimed or been in an accident in the decades I have been driving, but have been insured with different insurance companies over the years. So do I have to put the 4 down because that's all the certificate tells me or is there another way I can prove I have a much longer no claims history than what the current insurer is saying? If I contacted old companies I was insured with would they provide certificates I could compile and be able to use as proof of no claims? Or do I just have to bite the bullet and accept that I only have 4 years NCB now? 

Sandtree

Do you have the original policy docs from this insurer? What does it say for your no claims discount? Do you remember what you declared as your NCD when you took that policy out? Were you asked to send evidence of the NCD to them (not all ask for this)?

Generally insurers won't allow you to combine NCDs, the only near exception is where there is a known competitor system limitation and you need to evidence a higher NCD... so for example Direct Line letters used to say "5 or more years" if you had 5 or 45 years NCD because anything over 5 didnt give you anything and their system used to only count to 9. If you then went to another insurer who continued giving benefit up to say 10 years NCD then you used the two proofs because of the limitation of the DL letter/system. 

No insurer maxes out at 4 years NCD so this isnt your circumstances. Ultimately you could phone your current insurers but they will probably say that either you forgot to mention the NCD when you took the policy out or you failed to send proof of the NCD when requested so they removed it and changed your premiums... you can ask but in most cases they wont revisit this retrospectively.

PFMC84

I have my policy documents from when I took out the cover and it states on it that I have 5 years NCB as this was all their system went up to when filling out the online form to arrange cover. So I was puzzled as to why they say I only have 4 in the document they have prepared for me when, if their system only utilises 5 years of data, it should surely say 5? I have contacted them to query this, and hopefully they can issue me with an amended document showing the 10 years so I can give that to my new insurance company.

Sandtree

Well, it may say 9 years if you started with 5 and were with them for 4 years (5+4=9)

Clearly you need to speak to them to find out why its dropped... system errors do occasionally happen but it'd be a rare one, if I were a betting person I would say its more likely that proof of NCD was requested and not provided. Can you compare payments made -v- the original quote? What did your year 1 renewal/ year 2 policy say about NCD?

PFMC84

They put on my Statement of Fact that I had provided them with proof of my NCB from the last insurers and that is what I started this policy with and was receiving the maximum discount for it as they only go up to 5. If I have accrued a further 4 then yes, I should have a certificate that says 9 (not 10!) and am in correspondence with them now about this.

Even checking insurance quotes and the difference between having 5 years NCB and 9 years NCB is working out around £75 so would like to get the best price possible. Will also be making sure any future NCB documents state the proper number of years from now on for when I inevitably have to switch providers again! Thank you for your assistance.