House Insurance Policy - Claims

Plod

Why is it that if you make an enquiry with an insurance company concerning a potential claim that may or may not be covered by your house insurance and if the insurance company decide that it is not covered by your house insurance and therefore no payment is made by the insurance company, your insurance will record as a 'claim' and that in due course when you next get a quote will work against you and increase your premium. When you complete the quote form it asks have you had a clamouring the past 3-5 years. Now in my reckoning that if the insurance company do not accept liability and therefore no money changes hands and you end up paying for the damage yourself this should be recorded by the insurance company saying that they did not accept liability and not use the word "claim" in my opinion it is misleading and another insurance company will assume that liability has been accepted by the recording company and therefore mark it as a claim against you when you ask for a quote. My assumption is that if you make an enquiry to your insurance company although they take no action they will record it as a claim and you will pay down the line, most unfair! Has any other person experience having to pay or being quoted a higher premium under the forgoing situation. It should be examined by the ombudsman as the insurance companies are using this term to load the quotations.

Annemos

I believe the best way to look at this, is to think of these things as "incidents" reported to the Insurer. 

And that might raise the risk profile. 

There have been many Ombudsman cases where the Insurer wins the case when they have put "incidents" in the CUE Database. (Claims and Underwriting Exchange)

The ability to do this is also usually contained within the Policy Terms and Conditions. 

Unfortunately, the CUE systems call them all Claims. But there is space to show when nothing was paid out, for example. 

(Will leave it to others to discuss what other information can also be put on the CUE. For example "information only"  or what happens if a Claim was actually declined- how do they indicate that?)

Annemos

https://www.gocompare.com/car-insurance/guide/cue-database/

Annemos

A couple of FOS case examples, too.


https://www.financial-ombudsman.org.uk/decision/DRN-3521519.pdf


https://www.financial-ombudsman.org.uk/decision/DRN-2201118.pdf

DullGreyGuy

Plod said:

Why is it that if you make an enquiry with an insurance company concerning a potential claim that may or may not be covered by your house insurance and if the insurance company decide that it is not covered by your house insurance and therefore no payment is made by the insurance company, your insurance will record as a 'claim' and that in due course when you next get a quote will work against you and increase your premium. When you complete the quote form it asks have you had a clamouring the past 3-5 years. Now in my reckoning that if the insurance company do not accept liability and therefore no money changes hands and you end up paying for the damage yourself this should be recorded by the insurance company saying that they did not accept liability and not use the word "claim" in my opinion it is misleading and another insurance company will assume that liability has been accepted by the recording company and therefore mark it as a claim against you when you ask for a quote. My assumption is that if you make an enquiry to your insurance company although they take no action they will record it as a claim and you will pay down the line, most unfair! Has any other person experience having to pay or being quoted a higher premium under the forgoing situation. It should be examined by the ombudsman as the insurance companies are using this term to load the quotations.

You are required to declare incidents/losses irrespective of if a claim was made or who was liable. Unfortunately people tend to "forget" to declare things that they haven't previously told their insurer about hence insurers record it and push it to CUE to help prevent fraud. 

Complaints are reviewed by the ombudsman, they will not uphold a complaint simply because a claim was registered and details passed to CUE. They will only uphold a complaint if either the wrong information was passed to CUE or if the advisor gave wrong information when you spoke to them. The first example above is a good one, the complaint was partially upheld by RSA because the advisor gave wrong information but dismissed the part of the complaint that it had gone to CUE at all. The ombudsman rejected the complaint stating RSA's response and resolution was appropriate.