Cannot find the car insurer

Scooter_McGraw

H.

My mother had a big stroke before Christmas, and as her car is kept on the public road we had to make sure it is MOTd, taxed and insured etc. The trouble is, I can't remember who it is with. She has payments coming from her account for Aviva, but that is the old insurer and they were explicitly told to not automatically renew the policy. I have searched my email and can't find anything, but have checked on askMID.com and the car is definitely insured. Nothing has been sent through by post because I think the documentation had to be downloaded, but without knowing who it was with, I'm at a loss where to start.

The matter is made worse because if I ring the company that was the lowest quote on the confused.com search I did for her, they won't talk to me because I am not the policy holder!!

Is there an easy way to find out who it is with? Is there a central register online we can check with?

Cheers

Brie

Well working on the principle that if your mom's car was in an accident then the other insurer would be able to track her insurer down I think.  So maybe if you call your insurance and explain they may be able to help?  You may need to ask to talk to the vulnerable care team or the bereavement team to get really specialised assistance.

DVLA would know too wouldn't they?  

I'm assuming no one has power of attorney for your mom.

chrisw

Since the payments are still going to Avila, despite telling them not to auto renew and in the absence of any other evidence, I would suspect they are still the insurer and would be the best place to start if they'll agree to speak to you.

TELLIT01

Assuming you do find the insurer, make sure they don't cancel the insurance before you move the car off road.  If you do, you could find the car clamped and a hefty fine.

macman

If the Aviva payments are not for the car, then the only other likely reason they are being made is for buildings and contents insurance. If you can determine that is with another provider, then it has to be Aviva for the motor insurance.
The problem here is that no insurer is going to discuss this with you without a POA or written authority from your mum, because of data protection.
Is there no paper evidence, or docs sent by email? They must have supplied the cert by one of those two methods.

DullGreyGuy

Brie said:

Well working on the principle that if your mom's car was in an accident then the other insurer would be able to track her insurer down I think.  So maybe if you call your insurance and explain they may be able to help?  You may need to ask to talk to the vulnerable care team or the bereavement team to get really specialised assistance.

DVLA would know too wouldn't they?  

I'm assuming no one has power of attorney for your mom.

DVLA, police and other insurers would query the Motor Insurance Database that is owned and maintained by the Motor Insurer's Bureau (though technically maintained on Experian servers last time checked). Each type of organisation has different levels of access and search abilities... an insurer can search a registration and a date and it returns the insurer, policy number and claims department contact details. Police on the other hand can do wider searches like postcode or partial registration.

The MID offers two personal services as well, one is a check own vehicle which will simply state if your car is insured on the date the query is run and the other is intended for you to get the details of a third party after an accident (www.askmid.com/askmidenquiry.aspx) which is £10. 

In common with any data controller there is also rights under DPA/GDPR to ask for data www.mib.org.uk/managing-insurance-data/requesting-your-data but these are slower services. This does include an option for you to ask on behalf of someone else who the current insurer is intended for circumstances just like this.

Not sure many general insurers have a bereavement team, they are much more common in long term insurers like life & pensions. A vulnerable care team is slightly more likely but again most just train all staff rather than having a specialist team.

As to the OP seeing "Aviva" on the bank statements, given Aviva write car, home, life, critical illness and a host of investment options and other lines of insurance its a bit of an assumption that if its on the statement it must be for car insurance.