Car Insurance ‘Incident’ recorded

cw8825

Smelly_Dog said:

The overall number of claims settled, at 2.3 million, also rose 10% on 2022. From: https://www.forbes.com/uk/advisor/car-insurance/car-insurance-statistics/

That's 0.001268181% of claims ending up at the Ombudsman. Even if the number of rejected claims was ten times those reaching the Ombudsman that's still only 0.01% of claims being rejected. Methinks you are scaremongering.

To me the scaremongering is saying that by notifying of an incident will raise your insurance

A singular claim does not necessarily change a good risk to a bad one. 

There is a common sense element as already stated. anything involving a third party should be reported

DullGreyGuy

Smelly_Dog said:

The overall number of claims settled, at 2.3 million, also rose 10% on 2022. From: https://www.forbes.com/uk/advisor/car-insurance/car-insurance-statistics/

That's 0.001268181% of claims ending up at the Ombudsman. Even if the number of rejected claims was ten times those reaching the Ombudsman that's still only 0.01% of claims being rejected. Methinks you are scaremongering.

You think it would be as low as 10x? I mean if you knew you'd not declared another accident and your insurer caught you wouldn't you just put your hands up and say it's a fair cop or would you really fight it all the way through the insurer, into the ombudsman and up to an ombudsman?

Your maths also assumes that everyone is falsely not declaring accidents... I know personally in the last 5 years I've not had my car keyed, curbed the alloys or hit anything. My previous accidents were declared at the time.


Ultimately make your own choice on what level of honest you want to give, just dont expect sympathy if you become one of the minority who get caught after a major loss and the insurer voids your policy. Unless you are personally going to offer to pay other people's losses after their insurers void their policies for following your advice I'd suggest advice to commit fraud is tempered with at least a warning that there are risks in "forgetting" to declare things. 

Smelly_Dog

I think that one of the things that irks consumers the most is that, using databases, the Insurers can easily find things out before they offer a quote. Rather than waiting for a claim and then going digging it's about time that they were forced to run checks at the point of sale. That way people who make genuine mistakes wouldn't be penalised. Loss adjusters are the devil's spawn. Up there with Private Parking Companies and Traffic Wardens in the "most hated by the public"group.IMHO
 

DullGreyGuy

Smelly_Dog said:

I think that one of the things that irks consumers the most is that, using databases, the Insurers can easily find things out before they offer a quote. Rather than waiting for a claim and then going digging it's about time that they were forced to run checks at the point of sale. That way people who make genuine mistakes wouldn't be penalised. Loss adjusters are the devil's spawn. Up there with Private Parking Companies and Traffic Wardens in the "most hated by the public"group.IMHO

I really dont think it is, the majority of people are honest (enough) and remember what they have and haven't done so checks against CUE dont throw up anything. 

I've not stayed close to CUE since moving away from Motor and into more corporate areas of insurance but certainly back then it wasn't designed to be used live with the 100 insurers on Confused.com etc all running queries for the same quote to validate details provided on each and every quote.  It does appear there is at least one broker that does check CUE live but thats after you click through to buy from them. 

The second problem is CUE data isn't always great, take a classic 2 car accident, both claim off their own insurance there will be two Cue records but maybe one reported it as happening at 2pm and the other said it was 4pm so do you discredit one of them and assume its the same claim or do you flag to the customer they haven't reported one claim? My ex worked in counter fraud and a notable amount of their time were looking at different records and making decisions on if they're the same or not. Add to that different insurers report different levels of information etc etc etc and it's messy. 

Ultimately insurance is a contract of trust hence why you have to make a declaration before buying that you've answered all questions truthfully. Most insurers take that on trust and hence limit the CUE checks etc to the point of claim. If they asked for everything to be proved and validated pre-inception then that firstly wouldn't be a contract of trust any more and secondly it would increase costs notably... there are a few companies that are well known for doing all these checks immediately after purchase but they are also well known for adding £200 to the premium when they find out you were a week out on when you bought the car or passed the driving test and come with a notable cancellation fee so clearly are operating on a very different model (though they are a broker not an insurer)