Motor insurance after an accident

DullGreyGuy

Grey_Critic said:

facade said:

A half-decent insurer will allow you to transfer your policy to a replacement car, subject to an admin fee and payment of any extra charges if the policy would have cost more. It reads like this was happening, but then they changed their mind and cancelled the policy then started a new one.

Sorry but have come across this in the past. You cannot transfer the insurance as the original vehicle was written off, the insurance paid out and so the policy ended.

You do however still retain your protected NCD if it is a 2 claims in years entitlement

Many insurers will allow you to transfer the balance of the insurance to your new vehicle even though they've total lossed the old one... some impose rules like it has to be in X days of the total loss settlement or it must be broadly a similar vehicle. As said, you are charged any standard admin fee plus any additional premiums for the differences in the vehicle etc.

One critical thing will be that the time of ownership will typically now be 0 months and that will result in a premium uplift too.

In this case it appears as if the OP may have claimed directly from the TP insurer in which case his insurance is clean and can be transferred or cancelled for a refund as they wish. If they claimed off their own insurance then transfer tends to be the only option even on non-fault claims (and certainly on a fault claim)

Flight3287462

LET ME REPEAT THE OPs INSURANCE HAVE NOT PAID OUT ON THE CAR.

DullGreyGuy

Flight3287462 said:

LET ME REPEAT THE OPs INSURANCE HAVE NOT PAID OUT ON THE CAR.

How do you know? Are you the person that hit their car?

The OP says that the TPI have paid for the repairs but that doesnt stipulate if they dealt with it directly or reimbursed their insurers.

gropinginthedark

Update, firstly I repeat: My car was a write-off, the other party has accepted full responsibility, he's pleaded guilty to driving without due care and his insurers have paid up for the vehicle.
I'm advised by my insurers (Swinton) that the personal injury compensation takes a long time, partly to allow time to establish the long-term outcome of the injuries, partly because they need records from my GP, the ambulance service, police and hospital some of whom are slow to respond.

I'd paid my renewal a couple of weeks prior to the crash (without changing insurer, as advised by MSE I'd checked and couldn't find a better deal).  The expiry date for the previous cover was 3 or 4 days before the crash

I think the cost to my insurer might be a small increment for going from insurance group 12 to 15 and an admin charge, anything else they should be able to claim from the other insurer, this incident has cost my insurer nothing (BTW, the policy included legal cover). I paid up because I wanted to get back on the road, I'd found a replacement for immediate delivery (not easy at present because of market disruption from Covid).

I'm not happy that they effectively tried to charge a total of £320 on top of the £220 renewal paid a couple of weeks earlier, although I got that reduced to make a total of £195.  I do think I've been screwed and perhaps, as someone has suggested, I should ask for a breakdown of the extra I ended up paying.  Perhaps there's a contingency element in there in case there's a problem getting the personal injury compensation.

DullGreyGuy

Each insurer obviously has their own commercial arrangements with solicitors but in most cases injury claims are no risk to the claimant's insurers... insurers sell postcode sectors and solicitors take on the risks but make the profit from wining cases.

Vehicle group makes no difference, insurers have their own rating system for cars. Insuring my group 50 car was cheaper than insuring a group 26 hot hatch that I had thought about getting instead... the lower value, lower group car however is favoured by youngsters who have a tendency of crashing them whereas the 4x the price and almost double the insurance vehicle is owned by middle aged men like me and so has much lower claims even if repairing the vehicle is much more. 

As well as the change of vehicle group you also have to consider that you have now 0 years experience with this vehicle, another rating factor, people have more accidents in vehicles they are unfamiliar with than ones they are familiar with. Part of the premium potentially is also and administration fee for the change. Finally, some would argue they have you by the short and curlies as you are mid policy adjustments are always more expensive than if this had been the state at the original time of purchase... whilst new business discounts are now banned back in my day your original premium could have had up to a 40% new customer discount but your MTA would have no discount applied and so seem disproportionately expensive.