Subsidence: watch out for CUE, if ABI Domestic Subsidence Claims Agreement is invoked

Annemos

Some theory first: 


The Claims and Underwriting Exchange normally has a record of any claims, such as motor and home. It has details of the Claim and also its cost. Many Insurers will refer to this, to make sure you have not evaded reporting a previous claim, when you take out a new policy. 


The ABI Domestic Subsidence Claims Agreement, when it has been signed up to by Insurance Companies, states which Insurer will handle a Subsidence claim and how the claim will be funded. 

So in my case: I changed Insurers and Option 3 of that agreement was applied. (And I did know the previous Insurer was being informed of the claim): 

Where the Date of Notification is more than eight weeks but less than one year from the date of inception of the current Insurer's policy, any claim shall be accepted and dealt with by the Insurer to whom notification is given and the Cost of Settlement shared equally between the two Insurers. The handling Insurer shall keep the other Insurer advised of material developments, including the original reserve and any revision. Contributions shall be paid within 21 days subject to full details being supplied with supporting documentation (to include apportioned VAT invoices in respect of fees incurred on behalf of both Insurers). Interim contributions will not be collected for sums less than £5000.


My claim finished in August 2022 and I recently decided to get a CUE extract. 

I also have an FOS case that says: the previous Insurer should NOT be reporting the claim on the CUE, because the claim was never taken out with them. It is an error and the homeowner can request for it to be removed from the CUE. 

(In that case, the lady was accused of misreporting, because she had only declared one claim, but there were two claims shown on the CUE database: The Insurer who handled the Claim and the Prior Insurer who did not! So her Insurance Policy was cancelled, with all the negative ramifications of that!)

In my own case, my previous insurer has also made an entry on the CUE. It also has the wrong dates for completion of the claim and the wrong costings. 

I have submitted a Complaint to the previous Insurer and will let you know how I get on. (Request for any mention of a claim with that Insurer to be removed!) 

DullGreyGuy

There are several scenarios in which people effectively end up with co-insurance or multiple claims for one incident:  

• claim on Travel Insurance for personal belongings lost who's home insurance also includes PP cover.
• car accident and damage your laptop or something else above the £100 possession cover Motor typically has 
• I have no need to tell you about cost sharing under the subsidence agreement. 
• cases where people end up with two policies (normally not realising one is set to auto-renewal) 
• Poor claim registration where policyholder hits multiple parked cars can end up in multiple claims but we'd typically treat it as 1
• Likewise a car that is stolen and the next day is joy riden into another vehicle; this is still all one incident but is more excusable as to why FNL team register it as a second claim
• Third party registers a claim against a policyholder but one or the other quotes the wrong date of loss

All of these will result in multiple entries to CUE just by the nature of the automated process to load data. Some will be less problematic because they are across classes and most only look at their own class when looking for undeclared claims. 

 A sensible insurer will always ask questions when they see multiple claims on the same date of loss or even in close proximity. It would be great if CUE was 100% clean but it never will realistically be.

 Given your grief with your claims process being annoyed and therefore wanting it corrected is probably understandable but in general it's unlikely to cause a major issue and in particular to someone who's made a subsidence claim and therefore locked to an insurer even less so. 

Annemos

If they are safely locked in. 

I dislike it so much, because it looks as if just dummy entries have been used to close out somebody's books. 

It shows the incident date of the claim, as being when that previous Insurer's policy ended in February 2018. Whereas the actual Claim was actually submitted to the new Insurer August 2018. 

And my claim ended August 2022. But this entry shows it ending in July 2023. 

Sorry, but for me all this is unacceptable. 

For the life of me, with Subsidence Claims and that very clear agreement, I cannot understand why there are not firm instructions in place, as to which of them puts the claim onto the CUE. If the claim was not handled by the Previous Insurer, why are they recording it as a claim? (I never had a claim raised through that Company.) 

DullGreyGuy

You need to have a look at an insurance company's claim system and how basic 90% of them. I mean when trying to estimate the cost of counting vandalism claims as non-fault there was no way to identify vandalism as they get registered as Theft so all we could do was ask the FNOL team to put a comment on the claim with specific text and then run a query against the free text to try and find them.

I'd not be unimpressed if they can easily identify a claim is subsidence let alone to workout its one that should be excluded to be reported to CUE. Many of the examples above are much more common than subsidence claims near to the date of purchase and so would be higher priority to fix than this. 

Annemos

But if we do actually raise the issue with them, will it then be corrected?

(If we are helping them out, by doing their identification/explanation work on CUE for them!)

DullGreyGuy

Annemos said:

But if we do actually raise the issue with them, will it then be corrected?

(If we are helping them out, by doing their identification/explanation work on CUE for them!)

If they, or the FOS, agree they will correct the record for you... won't change what happens to the next person. 

Annemos

Very true. By the way, very perceptive of you to note my grumpiness.

I had just been discussing my helibar nighmare, with someone else on here, via private message.

I was indeed in a state of extreme annoyance, remembering again all that went wrong on my claim. And the CUE also arrived today. 

Annemos

Excellent news on this. 

The Insurance Company (a very large one), that had only made a Contribution to the Subsidence Claim, but did not actually manage the Subsidence claim, have thanked me for pointing out the issue. 

They have said, there was indeed an ERROR when they set up their "claim" right at the start.  As they were only the Secondary Insurer under the Domestic Subsidence Agreement, they should have set up the "claim" in the beginning as "Contribution", only. 

They said this CUE error will be corrected within 2 to 5 working days. 

(I also have mails from both the Primary Insurer and this Secondary Insurer, confirming that there has only ever been one Subsidence claim.)

Annemos

Well here is a sad update so far on this. 

(That Terminator film, where the other Robot keeps getting bashed and no matter how hard he is bashed, he just keeps popping up again and again! Well that is what my 2018 Subsidence claim is like. It simply WILL NOT DIE!)


The last thing I happily told you..... was that the Chap at the Previous Insurer (which had only made an "ABI Subsidence Agreement Claim Contribution"  )  .... was going to correct the CUE to show this fact. Implying that a Subsidence Claim would NOT be indicated.  (It was the Current Insurer who actually did the Claim for me.) 

So I expected this to be done, as it was stated to me in black and white in an e-mail!  I just went through the whole month-long process again to check this, getting a new data request for the new CUE extract (Version 2) ......    

What did I see to my utter dismay?  The Subsidence "claim" was now shown as OPEN again (which had made things even worse!!) and there was still NO apparent difference at all to the reporting descriptions on the CUE.

It still seemed to show a full Subsidence Claim, as if this company was the  "Current Insurer" who actually handled the Claim.    I strongly believe this is unacceptable and a misrepresentation of Facts/Data on a Shared Database like the CUE. It does NOT accurately represent what actually took place between me and this Previous insurer.     

(Nothing took place between me and the previous insurer?? See my comments to DGG at the end.) 


I raised the issue yet again and a Final Response Letter has now just been sent to me from a different person..... 

New Person said someone had re-opened the "claim" to enter it as "Contribution only, but had then been unable to sort it out and left it like that as Open! (Nobody informed me about this problem!)    The "claim" has I think been closed again, thank Heaven.  Compensation has also been provided to me, for being giving wrong information by that first chap.  (But I LIKED the first Chap's version!! That's the one I want!! ). New person now says there has to be a "Claim" registered/shown on the CUE. But there is no clarification at all about why the CUE does not appear to be changing its description of it, now they have agreed it is indeed a "Contribution Only claim".    

(I have not seen CUE Version 3 yet, but if all they did was a closure, then it appears to have stayed just the same in the CUE descriptions: a full Subsidence Claim.)


So..... I have now asked them to clarify for me..... What is the difference between the CUE output that they would generate for a "Full Subsidence claim, where they handle the whole claim as the Current Insurer"    AND the CUE output they would generate for a  "Contribution Only Claim", where they were the Previous Insurer and the homeowner had NO SUBSIDENCE CLAIM with them? 

I emphasised that I am expecting there to be a difference and I asked if it will be visible on CUE Version 3? 


If I do not get a satisfactory answer on this, I am going to the FOS. A lot of hassle, but I want this matter clarified once and for all! 


I will update this Post if anything happens.

(I am also finding, that this repeated process of having to do a new month-long data request, to find out what is on the latest version of the CUE, is wearing me down and wasting everybody's time at the MIB. One would think the Insurance company could look at the current status of it themselves and actually confirm to me what Version 3 now looks like? (I now have to do a third new data request to know for sure, so will not know for at least a month.) 




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Side notes for DGG if he reads this: 

a) It does not make sense to have TWO Subsidence claims for CUE purposes, when there was only ONE claim. 

b) And using dummy numbers. If there are TWO Subsidence Claims for CUE purposes. And the Current insurer who handled the claim shows the claim cost as 50,000 for the actual claim. But then the Previous insurer ALSO indicates, that they made an ABI contribution over to the Insurer actually handling the claim of 8,000.  Then surely there is now a double-count of the 8000??

Why isn't that 8,000 something that does not concern my data at all. It was surely just an inter-company transfer between the two Insurance Companies?? The Current Insurer asked for 8000 contribution from the Previous Insurer, under the well-established ABI Subsidence Claim Agreement Option 3. 

c) Just a thought ... if they insist that an incident has to be reported by the Previous Insurer. Should they show it as  "Information only" or "Notification only" for CUE purposes?  (As I believe happens when claims are withdrawn?)

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I can only find one FOS case on this issue, to add to my wonderful collection. Page 2 - third and fourth paragraphs of provisional findings.  This would seem to be implying that if a Previous Insurer has set up a Subsidence claim... then THAT is an error! It also says "And Mrs R may like to approach her Previous Insurer to have the Database record corrected!" That is what I am doing! 

This case also shows what can go wrong when there have been poor CUE reporting procedures for what is a Shared Database. 

https://www.financial-ombudsman.org.uk/decision/DRN5493612.pdf