Forgot to update occupation on car insurance and got into an accident.

c175618

Hi, I was involved in a car accident where I wasn’t at fault but my car has been written off, the other driver admitted liability at the scene. I made a claim against his insurance due to this and both insurance companies are currently discussing liability etc but I believe I have a strong case for zero liability. 

The problem is that on saturday I realised I had forgotten to update my occupation. The occupation on the insurance was correct at the time of taking the policy out and if I had changed it to my current occupation my premiums would’ve decreased as it is classed as lower risk. 

I’m just wondering where I stand in a legal point of view and if my insurance is likely to cancel my insurance due to this or investigate me for fraud? 

Also i’ve found a new car and was going to cancel my current policy to take out a cheaper policy with a different company on the new car. Could I get in legal trouble for cancelling my insurance due to my occupation being incorrect at the time of accident? 

Ive not had a chance to contact them about this yet due to it being the weekend / bank holiday but i’m going to talk to them first thing tomorrow. Is there anything I should expect when I call them? 

prettyandfluffy

I would report the accident but not mention your occupation until asked.  It may not come up unless you were driving on business.

chrisw

As above. They won't ask your occupation unless it's relevant to the claim.

dunstonh

I’m just wondering where I stand in a legal point of view and if my insurance is likely to cancel my insurance due to this or investigate me for fraud?

Nothing you have said gives any hint of fear of that happening.

no need for you to mention your occupation unless it was relevant to the incident. (e.g. you now needed business travel but didn't have it before)

Also i’ve found a new car and was going to cancel my current policy to take out a cheaper policy with a different company on the new car. Could I get in legal trouble for cancelling my insurance due to my occupation being incorrect at the time of accident? 

If you cancel, you are unlikely to get any refund.   If you transfer the existing policy to the new vehicle, it will continue until renewal, albeit updated on the new vehicle details.

c175618

If you cancel, you are unlikely to get any refund.   If you transfer the existing policy to the new vehicle, it will continue until renewal, albeit updated on the new vehicle details.

If I was to transfer my current policy over to the new car and update my occupation as well would this raise any red flags? Could they then ask me to provide proof of previous occupation that matches the timeframe of the accident? 

Aretnap

You should have nothing to worry about for a number of reasons.

(1) If the accident was the fault of the other driver (and you can prove it) your own insurance situation is irrelevant to any claim you make against him or his insurer. Even if you had no insurance whatsoever, his insurer would still have to pay for the damage to your car.

(2) As a matter if law, your own insurer can only penalise you for providing false information if they would have charged you a higher premium, or not insured you at all, had they had the correct information. You say that a refund would have been due had you told them, in which case they can hardly complain that you defrauded them by not claim your refund promptly enough. Note that this applies only if their own underwriting criteria would have given a lower premium for the new occupation. Their underwriting criteria may be different from a generic list of occupations by risk that you found on the web, or your own opinion on what's a high risk occupation.

(3) Even if your insurer would have charged a higher premium for the new occupation, the Financial Ombudsman's position is that when you change job mid term, they should not make any changes until renewal time, unless the new occupation involves a significant change in use of the car (eg you start using your car as a delivery driver, rather than just commuting to a different place to do a different job). Again, this should mean no penalty for not declaring the change promptly mid-term. See for example  https://www.financial-ombudsman.org.uk/decision/DRN-3702919.pdf

So relax, make the claim, and quietly update your occupation separately.

Grumpy_chap

c175618 said:

Hi, I was involved in a car accident where I wasn’t at fault but my car has been written off, the other driver admitted liability at the scene. I made a claim against his insurance due to this and both insurance companies are currently discussing liability etc but I believe I have a strong case for zero liability. 

The problem is that on saturday I realised I had forgotten to update my occupation. The occupation on the insurance was correct at the time of taking the policy out and if I had changed it to my current occupation my premiums would’ve decreased as it is classed as lower risk. 

I’m just wondering where I stand in a legal point of view and if my insurance is likely to cancel my insurance due to this or investigate me for fraud? 

Also i’ve found a new car and was going to cancel my current policy to take out a cheaper policy with a different company on the new car. Could I get in legal trouble for cancelling my insurance due to my occupation being incorrect at the time of accident? 

Ive not had a chance to contact them about this yet due to it being the weekend / bank holiday but i’m going to talk to them first thing tomorrow. Is there anything I should expect when I call them? 

Out of interest, what is the variance in occupation?

Some stated occupations are quite broad when it comes to specific roles - does an "Engineer" do design, or project management, or surveys, or maintenance, or ???
It would only be if the "Engineer" did something completely different - "Stand Up Comedian" for example - that the occupation has necessarily changed.

Has your occupation changed completely or is it still under the broad terms of whatever your stated occupation is?

Gavin83

I find the concept of requesting your job title for insurance purposes to be ridiculous. I’ve had a few job titles over the years yet there’s never been anything close on insurance websites. 

I work in IT and they generally have some very generic options to pick from. What’s even more insane is the difference in premiums between these generic options. The difference between IT Analyst and IT Consultant can be hundreds of pounds, despite it making no difference what so ever. So I just generally select 3 or 4 job titles that roughly describe what I do and pick the one that provides the lowest premium.

DullGreyGuy

Aretnap said:

(2) As a matter if law, your own insurer can only penalise you for providing false information if they would have charged you a higher premium, or not insured you at all, had they had the correct information. 

Which law @Aretnap? 

Most law about non-disclosure is CIDRA 2012 which has no such provision for intentional or reckless non-disclosure... for careless then the matter of what would have happened had the true information been given comes into play. 

c175618 said:
 I made a claim against his insurance due to this and both insurance companies are currently discussing liability etc but I believe I have a strong case for zero liability. 

What were the actual circumstances of the accident, according to you? The above is not the typical progress of a case where a third party insurer believes their insured is to blame for an accident. 

Aretnap

DullGreyGuy said:

Aretnap said:

(2) As a matter if law, your own insurer can only penalise you for providing false information if they would have charged you a higher premium, or not insured you at all, had they had the correct information. 

Which law @Aretnap? 

Most law about non-disclosure is CIDRA 2012 which has no such provision for intentional or reckless non-disclosure... for careless then the matter of what would have happened had the true information been given comes into play. 

Pre-CIDRA when the was no legal distinction between careless and deliberate non-disclosure there was case law to the effect that from the insured's perspective a fact was only material and needed declaring if it would have made the insurer less keen to insure him. I remember a case (that I can't find right now from my phone) of a man who failed to declare a motoring conviction, but also incorrectly declared the date of an accident that he didn't actually have to declare, because it was longer ago than he thought it was. The insurer applied the same loading for the wrongly declared accident as it would have done for the conviction, so the end result was that the premium he paid was the same as it would have been had he declared everything correctly. The Appeal court ruled that the insurer was wrong to void his policy in those circumstances.

Arguably the common law situation has been changed by CIDRA because as you say it doesn't make specific provision for a deliberate non-disclosure which increases the insured's premium - but it's a bit of an argument from silence, and I'd suggest that it would still be perverse for an insurer to reject a claim because the customer paid them too much as a result of his actions.

In any event neglecting to update a detail like this mid-term is realistically going to be treated as careless rather than deliberate, so can only affect a claim if the change would have resulted in a higher premium/no cover. Unless the insurer wants to argue for a  proportional settlement that would mean paying more than the actual cost of the claim.