Does it affect car insurance?

beatthebookienet

Scenario 1: I have someone as a named driver. The named driver has their own car which is parked on the street and a third party drives into it. The third party's insurance covers the cost of the repairs. Does my insurance need to know about the incident where my named driver wasn't at fault, in the car at the time and didn't claim from their own insurance?

Scenario 2: I drive one of the vans at my work and scuff the wing mirror. I fill out an accident form and the vehicle is repaired in-house. Does this need to be declared on my personal insurance? How would they know?

wongataa

1. Read your policy documents.

2. Read your policy documents.

If in doubt ask your insurance company.

Bigphil1474

As above, it will depend what is in the policy document i.e. the actual words used. If they say that you or any named driver must report any incidents or claims involving the insured vehicle, then you don't need to report the 2 incidents. If it says any incidents or claims (full stop), then under their T&Cs, you do. In the first incident, there was a claim, in the second there wasn't. 
For the first incident, if you look at it from the insurers point of view, the car that was hit could have been your car as they are insured to drive it - do they park in places where damage is more likely to occur? It may be seen as an increase in risk that they'd want to know about. Personally, if I didn't need to report something, I wouldn't.

DullGreyGuy

Your insurer will need to know, no need to read your policy book to find that out. 

What your policy book will clarify is when they need to know, for claims not involving your vehicle/not under the DoC cover then most will only need to know at renewal so they can factor the incidents into your price. A minority will want to know about the straight away but will only impact you at renewal. 

How do they know is how most people hope to get away without declaring them. There are various databases like CUE where companies exchange details, you can never be 100% sure that the works company doesn't ultimately inform their insurers even if they repaired the damage themselves. Similarly these days insurers use voice stress analysis etc when validating details to identify customers who may be telling pork pies and then can go into cognitive questioning and other techniques to discover fraudsters.

Just remember if you do intend to commit fraud/"forget" to remember that under CIDRE an insurer can void your policy and keep the premiums if they find you have intentionally or recklessly lied on your application (inc renewals) which you then have to declare for life (with most insurers)