Car Insurance - proof of no claims

kwaker501

This is a bit of a long shot, but hoping some wonderful person will have some useful advice!

Short version is: I've held continuous car insurance, in my name, since 1998 (my first car!). I had an accident in around 2000/2001 and as part of the claim they reduced my NC back to a year (from memory). I have no documentation to prove/disprove this...

Since then I've managed to screw up my NC to the point that my current company is showing that I have only 13 years in NC, despite the fact that I have held continuous insurance since 1998. Even if you account for the reduction, at this point I have at least 21 years NC, but now no proof. 

Looking at a renewal quote the difference between 13 years NC and 21 years is about £50! I thought that insurers have a database of insurance, so I could easily prove my continuously held policies - but is this the case? Is there any way I can prove my NC history??

Any hints/tips/advice gratefully received!!!

Singlemummy_2

Could you contact your previous insurers and ask them? Gave you checked your current/past paperwork? 

mrseal

Typically data is kept for 7 years for financial sector, keeping data since 1998 is unlikely,  due to the statute of limitations etc. This being said, when did you last get a renewal notice where it reflected accurate? For example, say in 2018 the renewal notice had an accurate NCD, you could go to that insurer and request the NCD or even the renewal invite from that year.

On another note, and it is worth considering. Let's assume that you know the data has been inaccurate since 2010. If you flag it and say I know it has been inaccurate from years since an accident in 2001, and was even more messed up by 2010. It raises a question, if you do not correct incorrect data on your insurance policy for 10 years, what else may be wrong? Does the insurer actually know the risk being insured? 

In my mind, before doing anything with insurance consider any potential can of worms. Also, the 13 years may be valid, my insurer has a policy clause that they will only consider a max NCD of 10 years, so it can't ever be 11. Maybe yours is a max 13? Not sure how it works if you want to then change insurer, and show you have more years - I suspect it would be a struggle. Also - I doubt it would make much difference to a premium at this point given the many years already logged.

DullGreyGuy

Details of Motor insurance is normally kept longer than 7 years because of the potential for Minor's to have been involved in accidents and they have until their 21st birthday to make a claim. For other classes of business the retention period is often longer due to long tail claims like asbestosis 

kwaker501 said:

Looking at a renewal quote the difference between 13 years NC and 21 years is about £50! I thought that insurers have a database of insurance, so I could easily prove my continuously held policies - but is this the case? Is there any way I can prove my NC history??

The problem is that NCD is a very artificial thing and isnt exactly what the name suggests it is... for example you can only use NCD on one vehicle at a time so if you had 20 years and bought a second car that new car starts with 0 years... if you then had a claim on your main car at renewal you'd have one NCD of 3 years and one NCD of 1 year. If you decided to get rid of the second car you couldnt then combine the two 

Many insurers only give credit for up to 5 years, anything over that is vanity only. Most the rest only give credit up to 9 years and in some cases what discount they give a 9 years is less than the discount that others give at 5 years. Many insurers have very old core systems and there was a material difference to those systems between having the NCD field in the db being 1 or 2 digits in length. As a consequence many will send proof of NCD saying "5+ years" or "9+ years" and similarly in the days of call centre quotes agents would pre-key the NCD as 5 years (over 75% of people have max NCD) and there was no point keying anything above this as it was max and letters would say 5+ if it was 5 or 25.

If its making a difference, which I'm surprised it is, then you need to go back through your various policies and renewals and you'll find at least one point where you went with someone who does the X+ years approach. You then need to find the renewal prior to that to show you had 15 years at that point but your new insurer at the time recorded it as 9+ years. It'll be a pain unless you are very organised.