Car insurance claims

Pickleball

Hi everyone I need a bit of advice. I'm with direct line and am likely to be at 50-50 fault with another driver. The cost to repair damages on my car is £1400 and my excess is £350. If I claim my NCB goes from 3 years to 1. The thing is, I made another claim 2 years ago for vandalism/theft from car (catalytic converter theft) and my NCB was protected. DL paid out almost 2k to repair damages for that one. 

I'm very worried about next year's premiums. I paid £550 last year and when I had a look online it quoted me £1800 with black box! Any gurus with advice?
Should I make the claim? Can I ask DL what my renewal would look like?

When filling in insurance forms when they say what is the total claims cost is that the excess I paid or the bill from repairers?

Thanks for the long read!

DullGreyGuy

If it is a 50/50 as you say and the third party is claiming then it makes little/no difference if you claim or not as your insurers will be paying 50% of the third party's claim anyway so will be a fault claim against your policy. The only difference is there is no excess payable on third party claims.

Most insurers dont ask the cost of the claim, its not very indicative of your driving skill if the driver who's car you go into the back of is currently unemployed so no loss of earnings claim or is the CFO of a multi-national and so loss of earnings is a 6 figure sum. If they do ask then you'd need to give the total outlay of your insurance company which would not only be the repair cost of your car, in a fault accident, but what they paid out to the third party as well.

Pickleball

The other party has messaged me if I want to settle their damage via insurance or outside of insurance. They believe I'm 100% at fault, which I clearly disputed. As it's likely to go 50/50, do I respond and tell them to go through their insurance? 

If they don't claim and they're settled externally, is it going to help me at all? 

Ectophile

Sounds like you have 2 choices:

1. Pay all of the other party's repair costs, and all of your repair costs.  Then pretend to your insurer that the accident never happened.  And hope that they never find out about it (because they won't be happy if they do).
2. Contact your insurance.  Pay the £350 excess, and more premiums for a few years to come.  And no worry that your insurance company might find out that you've been hiding something from them.
   

prettyandfluffy

Be aware that if you don't declare it to your insurer and they later find out, they could cancel your insurance.  Then when you try to get insurance in the future and are asked whether you have ever had insurance cancelled or refused you will have to say "yes" (because they'll know anyway) and you may have a lot of difficulty getting insurance and/or have to pay massive premiums.  There is nothing to stop the other party from taking your money for the repair and then reporting the incident to the insurers so it could turn into a lose-lose situation for you.

facade

Ectophile said:

Sounds like you have 2 choices:

1. Pay all of the other party's repair costs, and all of your repair costs.  Then pretend to your insurer that the accident never happened.  And hope that they never find out about it (because they won't be happy if they do).
2. Contact your insurance.  Pay the £350 excess, and more premiums for a few years to come.  And no worry that your insurance company might find out that you've been hiding something from them.
   

3) Pay all of the other party's repair costs, and all of your repair costs.  Then tell your insurer "for information only". Your NCD stays intact as there hasn't been a claim.

4) Inform your insurer that you would like to pay all third party costs and not claim anything yourself. Your NCD stays intact as there hasn't been a claim, but no doubt your insurer will charge some sort of "admin fee". Rather pointless as you could go for 3).

tifo

facade said:

Then tell your insurer "for information only". Your NCD stays intact as there hasn't been a claim.

It'll still affect you in future, not with NCD but with declaring the accident for future quotes so it will affect you even if you didn't make a claim.

When asked "have you had an accident in the last 3 or 5 years" you have to say Yes and give details.

Once the insurer knows about an accident there's no getting away with it.