Car insurance

AlexS19

Hello Dear Members,

I would like to find out wether my insurance company violating my consumer rights or not. If so, what can I do about it?

What happened?

I had a collision what I believe it was not my fault, but my insurer thinks otherwise. On they response the referring to a specific point of our contract that states the "insurer has the right to defend or settle any claims on your behalf"

In my opinion they made a decision based on what is the best outcome for them without considering my situation. They offered a 50/50 split to the third party and not willing to fight my case on a trial even though I believe it is a strong case.

I requested  a subject access under the Data Protection Act 2018 and asked them to provide all the communication between them and the third party insurer, but the response was they can only provide data what contains my details and they do not have to disclose  all the communications.

Is that correct?

Needless to say my renewal is due next months and they increased my £780 / year premium to a £3280 / year

It seems it easier for them to settle the case 50/50 so no cost of trial and increase my premium and record an incident on my MIB file. So they wash they hands job done and do not care about they customer at all.

Is there anything I can do about it?

MorningcoffeeIV

No. There's no violation of your consumer rights - it's fine.

DullGreyGuy

As above, no, they have a statutory and contractual right to settle the claim as they see fit once they have indemnified you. 

The majority of people that have a decision taken against their will do not renew with the same insurer and therefore your theory that they want a 50/50 to be able to collect more premium from you doesnt hold up. Even if you did renew the increase premium wouldn't cover what, on average, has been paid out especially if there was any injury claim. 

Insurers will make decisions based on economics. They cannot recover the costs of legal representation in small track cases and so its obviously stupid to spend £4,000 on lawyers and barristers to try and avoid paying £3,000 as win you are £1,000 down and lose you are £7,000 down. 

Data protection covers anything where you are personally identifiable, if you arent personally identifiable then there is no legal requirement to disclose under a SAR. That said, you'd expect most letters/emails to contain details of their insured as part of a template however if they are using one of the various portals to communicate with the third party insurer they wouldnt. 

You could ask them to deal with it on a WP basis, if they havent already accepted the 50/50, which then would allow you in principle to at least to attempt to recover 100% of your uninsured losses in court however 1) this wont improve your premium situation and 2) they will require indemnification such that if you end up with a worse outcome than 50/50 that you will pay the extra costs incurred

AlexS19

MorningcoffeeIV said:

No. There's no violation of your consumer rights - it's fine.

So basically I as a customer just need to suck it up and insures free to do what ever they wish.

AlexS19

DullGreyGuy said:

As above, no, they have a statutory and contractual right to settle the claim as they see fit once they have indemnified you. 

I did not claimed

The majority of people that have a decision taken against their will do not renew with the same insurer and therefore your theory that they want a 50/50 to be able to collect more premium from you doesnt hold up. Even if you did renew the increase premium wouldn't cover what, on average, has been paid out especially if there was any injury claim. 


Insurers will make decisions based on economics. That is the problem. They should made a decision based on what is best for they customer. They cannot recover the costs of legal representation in small track cases and so its obviously stupid to spend £4,000 on lawyers and barristers to try and avoid paying £3,000 as win you are £1,000 down and lose you are £7,000 down. If they would win they cost would be covered by the loser. 

Data protection covers anything where you are personally identifiable, if you arent personally identifiable then there is no legal requirement to disclose under a SAR. That said, you'd expect most letters/emails to contain details of their insured as part of a template however if they are using one of the various portals to communicate with the third party insurer they wouldnt. 

You could ask them to deal with it on a WP basis, What is WP basis?if they havent already accepted the 50/50, which then would allow you in principle to at least to attempt to recover 100% of your uninsured losses in court however I do not wish to recover anything. I want a no fault claim on my MIB file and my NCB 1) this wont improve your premium situation and Actually It would. The compering sites with the extra NCB and no fault claim give me around £650/ year quotes 2) they will require indemnification such that if you end up with a worse outcome than 50/50 that you will pay the extra costs incurred I am confident that the judge would decide on my favour

It seems a dead end for me anyway. 

Thank you

Alderbank

You could ask them to deal with it on a WP basis, What is WP basis?if they havent already accepted the 50/50, which then would allow you in principle to at least to attempt to recover 100% of your uninsured losses in court however I do not wish to recover anything. I want a no fault claim on my MIB file and my NCB 1) this wont improve your premium situation and Actually It would. The compering sites with the extra NCB and no fault claim give me around £650/ year quotes 2) they will require indemnification such that if you end up with a worse outcome than 50/50 that you will pay the extra costs incurred I am confident that the judge would decide on my favour

It seems a dead end for me anyway. 

Dealing with your claim on a without prejudice (WP) basis means they will agree to deal with your claim in order to limit the costs of the claim, but without admitting liability.

As above, you would have to put your money where your mouth is, but that might not be a problem since you are confident you will win.

daveyjp

From experience the only time the other party will ever be found 100% at fault without a fight is if your vehicle isn't moving.

Both vehicles moving will require good evidence as to why both parties aren't at fault.

I was once T boned after the third party emerged from a T junction without looking.  Threat of Court was enough for the other party insurance to admit full liability, but that required me to prepare a decent evidence pack and argument as to why they were at fault.

DullGreyGuy

AlexS19 said:

DullGreyGuy said:

As above, no, they have a statutory and contractual right to settle the claim as they see fit once they have indemnified you. 

I did not claimed

The majority of people that have a decision taken against their will do not renew with the same insurer and therefore your theory that they want a 50/50 to be able to collect more premium from you doesnt hold up. Even if you did renew the increase premium wouldn't cover what, on average, has been paid out especially if there was any injury claim. 


Insurers will make decisions based on economics. That is the problem. They should made a decision based on what is best for they customer. They cannot recover the costs of legal representation in small track cases and so its obviously stupid to spend £4,000 on lawyers and barristers to try and avoid paying £3,000 as win you are £1,000 down and lose you are £7,000 down. If they would win they cost would be covered by the loser. 

Data protection covers anything where you are personally identifiable, if you arent personally identifiable then there is no legal requirement to disclose under a SAR. That said, you'd expect most letters/emails to contain details of their insured as part of a template however if they are using one of the various portals to communicate with the third party insurer they wouldnt. 

You could ask them to deal with it on a WP basis, What is WP basis?if they havent already accepted the 50/50, which then would allow you in principle to at least to attempt to recover 100% of your uninsured losses in court however I do not wish to recover anything. I want a no fault claim on my MIB file and my NCB 1) this wont improve your premium situation and Actually It would. The compering sites with the extra NCB and no fault claim give me around £650/ year quotes 2) they will require indemnification such that if you end up with a worse outcome than 50/50 that you will pay the extra costs incurred I am confident that the judge would decide on my favour

It seems a dead end for me anyway. 

Thank you

You are claiming something, the third party liability which you deny but ultimately is being settled by your insurers.

No, unless there are exceptional circumstances lawyers/barristers fees are unrecoverable in small track cases (for non-injury cases that is anything under £10,000 of losses and can be higher) other than a token £50. Small track is intended to be to deal with small simple cases where barristers etc arent required but whereas you may be comfortable rocking up to court alone to represent yourself for your insurer its 1) more complicated for a limited company because it cannot physically attend itself and 2) policyholders wouldnt be impressed if their insurer sent your typical motor claims handler to represent them whos only been through a 2 week training course and has no legal qualifications. 

If it goes into Fast Track (over £10,000 under £25,000) then limited legal costs can be recovered from the loser.

WP = without prejudice but this is irrelevant now you clarify you arent claiming anything for your own damages. 

You can still speak to your insurers about you handling it but they will want indemnification for anything worse than a 50/50 settlement and they are under no obligation to allow you to do it.  In one case where a PH was certain they would win they ended up paying £20,000 because they didnt and as it was related to an injury claim, they couldnt use bankruptcy to avoid it. 

Aylesbury_Duck

AlexS19 said:

MorningcoffeeIV said:

No. There's no violation of your consumer rights - it's fine.

So basically I as a customer just need to suck it up and insures free to do what ever they wish.

Are they acting in accordance with the terms and conditions in the policy?  If so, it's not about you having to "suck it up", it's about you accepting a course of action you agreed to when you took out the policy.

If they're acting in contravention of your policy, that's a different matter.  Are they?

sheramber

On they response the referring to a specific point of our contract that states the "insurer has the right to defend or settle any claims on your behalf"

I think you will find that statement in all policies.

MorningcoffeeIV

AlexS19 said:

MorningcoffeeIV said:

No. There's no violation of your consumer rights - it's fine.

So basically I as a customer just need to suck it up and insures free to do what ever they wish.

Or stop having accidents.

Or if you insist on having them, make sure they're not 50/50 ones.