Car insurance. Anyone asked for money back as car hardly driven due to Covid?

AdrianC

Biggus_Dickus said:

Nonetheless, it appears(??) that the vast majority of insurance companies looked upon the reduced number of claims and subsequent pay-outs last year

Did that happen?

Admiral certainly couldn't know whether or not that would be true when they made those small payments, back in April last year.

As they said at the time...
https://www.admiral.com/stayathome
If the lockdown continues, will I get a further refund?
We’ve taken the step to refund £110m based on our best estimate of the amount we would save compared to claims that would otherwise have been made.
Admiral has always been committed to doing the right thing for its customers and we do not intend to benefit from reduced driving due to lockdown.
We also want to further reward customers who choose to renew or join Admiral and will also continue to reflect changes to claims rates in our prices.
(So that's a "no" to the question of whether there'll be more if lockdown continued...)

...based on their best estimate...

If it did result in lower claims, then that'll be reflected in premiums across future years - "personal lines" insurance like this is a price-led business on VERY thin margins, to the border of unprofitability for most. Note that last dozen or so words of their answer...

Grumpy_chap

Biggus_Dickus said:

Nonetheless, it appears(??) that the vast majority of insurance companies looked upon the reduced number of claims and subsequent pay-outs last year as a financial windfall that they happily trousered in its entirety.

Both my wife and I found our renewals lower this year so, perhaps, the lower claims last year are being reflected in lower premiums?

justworriedabit

Thank you all. I now won't be wasting my time for a possible tenner back.

Biggus_Dickus

Grumpy_chap said:

Biggus_Dickus said:

Nonetheless, it appears(??) that the vast majority of insurance companies looked upon the reduced number of claims and subsequent pay-outs last year as a financial windfall that they happily trousered in its entirety.

Both my wife and I found our renewals lower this year so, perhaps, the lower claims last year are being reflected in lower premiums?

The money they’ve saved during lockdown no.1 and lockdown no.2 is probably huge.

If, god forbid, we have a lockdown no.3 the insurance companies will have so much surplus cash they’ll have to pay us to accept their policy’s! 😆

Grumpy_chap

Biggus_Dickus said:

Grumpy_chap said:

Biggus_Dickus said:

Nonetheless, it appears(??) that the vast majority of insurance companies looked upon the reduced number of claims and subsequent pay-outs last year as a financial windfall that they happily trousered in its entirety.

Both my wife and I found our renewals lower this year so, perhaps, the lower claims last year are being reflected in lower premiums?

The money they’ve saved during lockdown no.1 and lockdown no.2 is probably huge.

If, god forbid, we have a lockdown no.3 the insurance companies will have so much surplus cash they’ll have to pay us to accept their policy’s! 😆

I thought this was Lockdown 3.
Lockdown 1 - March to June 2020
Lockdown 2 - November 2020
Lockdown 3 - mid-December 2020 (regional), January 2021 (national England) - March 2021

Biggus_Dickus

Grumpy_chap said:

Biggus_Dickus said:

Grumpy_chap said:

Biggus_Dickus said:

Nonetheless, it appears(??) that the vast majority of insurance companies looked upon the reduced number of claims and subsequent pay-outs last year as a financial windfall that they happily trousered in its entirety.

Both my wife and I found our renewals lower this year so, perhaps, the lower claims last year are being reflected in lower premiums?

The money they’ve saved during lockdown no.1 and lockdown no.2 is probably huge.

If, god forbid, we have a lockdown no.3 the insurance companies will have so much surplus cash they’ll have to pay us to accept their policy’s! 😆

I thought this was Lockdown 3.
Lockdown 1 - March to June 2020
Lockdown 2 - November 2020
Lockdown 3 - mid-December 2020 (regional), January 2021 (national England) - March 2021

Could well be ,..it's all been 1 continuous lockdown for me, tbh. 😪 

JamoLew

Biggus_Dickus said:

JamoLew said:

They should be charging people more imo 

The standards of driving seem to have rapidly gone downhill.
Most noticeable the last couple of weeks as the kids go back to school and people who haven’t been driving for weeks/months get back on the road.
It feels like Christmas where people drive around with other things on their mind.

How much would you be willing to pay? 😁

Nothing because my mileage is mostly unchanged

Paul_Mcr

My insurance premium went *up* at the end of October, despite mileage and number of journeys being way down from late March. But another factor increasing the £££s was that I have to declare for 5 years a July 2019 'not at fault' when our car's rear bumper was damaged slightly in a slow-moving line of traffic. So far this has added around £60 a year to my premium (independent of NCB). I have checked this with 2 companies - the incident makes me 'higher risk' according to their algorithms. When I asked "So I shouldn't actually take my car out on the road?" The answer was, basically, yes! There's more, which is worse, but I need to go and lie down in a dark corner and count slowly to 10.

AdrianC

Paul_Mcr said:

But another factor increasing the £££s was that I have to declare for 5 years a July 2019 'not at fault' when our car's rear bumper was damaged slightly in a slow-moving line of traffic. So far this has added around £60 a year to my premium (independent of NCB). I have checked this with 2 companies - the incident makes me 'higher risk' according to their algorithms. When I asked "So I shouldn't actually take my car out on the road?" The answer was, basically, yes! There's more, which is worse, but I need to go and lie down in a dark corner and count slowly to 10.

It's very simple.
People like you, whose car use has them regularly sitting in slow-moving urban traffic, are far more likely to be involved in minor nudges like that than those of us who don't.
If the car that hit you did a runner or turned out to be uninsured, your insurer would have had to pay the bill.
You are a higher risk to them of paying out.

Where I used to live, my car got hit while parked outside my house, by somebody backing out of the drive opposite.
Where I now live, that's a physical impossibility.
Which location presents the higher risk to my insurer of a future claim?
Now bear in mind that while I lived at that house, next door's car was written off when punted into a phone pole by a runaway car from up the hill, a runaway down the hill ended up upside-down in somebody's sunken front garden just where they'd been minutes before, and my cars were nudged but with no damage several other times.

BOWFER

Paul_Mcr said:

My insurance premium went *up* at the end of October, despite mileage and number of journeys being way down from late March. But another factor increasing the £££s was that I have to declare for 5 years a July 2019 'not at fault' when our car's rear bumper was damaged slightly in a slow-moving line of traffic. So far this has added around £60 a year to my premium (independent of NCB). I have checked this with 2 companies - the incident makes me 'higher risk' according to their algorithms. When I asked "So I shouldn't actually take my car out on the road?" The answer was, basically, yes! There's more, which is worse, but I need to go and lie down in a dark corner and count slowly to 10.

My wife and my mother both had 'no fault' accidents.
Neither have had their policies go up as a result, but we tend to change every year anyway.
The comparison websites usually have an option for "no fault all costs recovered", so it's not like we're not declaring it.
Moral is, shop around and there's simply no need to pay any extra at all.