Car accident - 3rd party not responding and haven't completed accident form

DonningVonKruger

Hi,

I was involved in a non-fault accident nearly 2 weeks ago (rear ended by commercial lorry). The 3rd party insurance have requested the driver/company completes an accident report form and I have chased the driver's business daily and have not been given an answer. Speaking to his insurance company, they said they cannot do anything until it is completed and there are no time limits for them to return it. I am now stuck with a damaged 2 month old car which, although driveable, is in need of major repairs. 

Is there anything I can do to put pressure on or is there an escalation route here?

DullGreyGuy

Companies are normally slow... the driver has to give the form to their manager who passes it to the depot manager who passes it to the fleet manager who passes it to the broker who finally pass it to the insurer. Any one of those may decide the form needs changing and/or have a backlog of post to deal with.

You can either wait, claim off your insurance who'll counter claim from the TP insurer, use an accident management company who'll do the repairs and hire on credit and claim it from the TP insurer or pay for the car to be repaired out your own pocket and then send a letter before action to the company with the repair invoice and go to the county court if they dont respond within your timescales. 

DE_612183

I think as well the term "non-fault" doesn't actually meat that you were not at fault - it means that the insurance company can recover the costs from the 3rd party - if they don't fill out the form then it isn't "non-fault" and you may have to seek to reclaim the costs by another route. If you have legal protection, your insurance company may be able to advise you how to do this.

TELLIT01

Why is the OP dealing with this at all.  Surely the insurer should be chasing the required documentation.

DonningVonKruger

TELLIT01 said:

Why is the OP dealing with this at all.  Surely the insurer should be chasing the required documentation.

I am a company car driver. My boss wanted to claim off their insurance first, but looks like we will have to go through ours. I have suggested an accident management company, but my boss is worried we may end up with the 3rd party insurer refusing the hire costs - I don't personally think this would happen. I do drive a largish EV and have said I would want a similar replacement vehicle while mine is off the road, something I know an accident management company would do. 

DullGreyGuy

TELLIT01 said:

Why is the OP dealing with this at all.  Surely the insurer should be chasing the required documentation.

Because many people decide they dont want to involve their insurers in non-fault accidents (some insurers have similar mindsets). Some hope that by doing so they wont get an increase in premiums and the "not involve" is fairly often paired with a "dont inform" too. 

[Deleted User]

Contact their insurer and tell them that you are going to claim from your own insurance if they don't get things moving. They will want to avoid that because it costs them a lot more.

DullGreyGuy

[Deleted User] said:

Contact their insurer and tell them that you are going to claim from your own insurance if they don't get things moving. They will want to avoid that because it costs them a lot more.

Commercial insurer wont care so much, particularly if it's a corporate client.  Insurers will very rarely deal with a claim without any account from their insured.

[Deleted User]

In my experience they do care because it means big costs. They can't not deal with the claim, their customer will be getting sued and expecting them to handle it if they don't.

DullGreyGuy

[Deleted User] said:

In my experience they do care because it means big costs. They can't not deal with the claim, their customer will be getting sued and expecting them to handle it if they don't.

Most corporates will be reimbursing their insurers anyway. When you have a large number of vehicles on the road its not a question of if you will have an accident but how many and how bad. You have to insure from the ground up on TP losses but if you left it like that you would be paying an ops cost, IPT, risk margin and profit margin on what is basically a known costs. Hence companies buy loss sensitive insurance or create a captive reinsurer etc to bring that base level of costs inhouse and just pay a basic admin fee/counterparty risk charge for the first £xm of losses per annum.

One large haulage company I dealt with had an aggregate reimbursement in the tens of millions, a hire car company in the hundreds of millions. Both did claims handling in house. A few councils I've dealt with have retentions in the millions but use a third party administrator for the claims handling

When your insurer handles a claim all they can charge the third party insurer is what they themselves have directly paid for the claim (allocated claims costs). Back in my claims days some TPIs said they actively didnt try to capture our customers in non-fault accidents because our cost controls (due to our size) were much better than theirs.  Ok, some companies have tried to be clever now with internal repair management companies charging 5% commissions etc but these are still around the edges costs compared to PI or credit hire. 

[Deleted User]

You are assuming it's a big firm with lots of vehicles.