Car Insurance Job Picker Discussion

Welshwoofs

I always have problems with job titles for insurance quotes. I work in the Internet industry and that seems to be an area much under-represented by these job title lists. I've never found anything even close to what I do and usually end up having to call myself an 'IT Manager' purely on the basis that my job involves an Internet service and you need a computer to get to it! lol

No idea how that effects my insurance but I don't seem to have too many options!

deanos

Does housewife really add a premium ?

My wife does a bit of Avon so what could that be classed as ?

lisyloo

How does being on Incapacity Benefit and not being well enough to work affect car insurance please?

Well it's all based on statistics.

It's not possible to interview each person, give them a medical, analyse their driving patterns and asses their driving. It's simply too expensive, so people are grouped together statistically.

So for example females make less claims than males therefore it's lawful to charge males more on the basis of gender.

If statistics show working people have a different number of claims to non-working people them they are allowed to charge differently on that basis.

dogbot

Does housewife really add a premium ?

All of this depends on the insurer - each insurer has its own view.

My wife does a bit of Avon so what could that be classed as ?

Regards your second point - your wife is a housewife with a part time occupation (sales person or sales representative) and both 'occupations' need to be declared! If she uses the car for the part time job the vehicle needs to be insured for business use/commercial travel. Regard's home insurance - if she has clients come to your house this also needs to be declared to the insurer.

deanos

She walks so dont need buisness insurance

PollyLL

I just wanna warn you people of my story, where my claim has been rejected and the insurance company is using my job title as the reason, so you should be extremely careful of accepiting this advice. I have written in and I hope Martin will see my email, but want to tell you all as well and if I can, enclosed a scan of the letter which you should all agree is astounding. Here's my email to Martin, slightly adjusted for my privacy:

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Edited in later:

This was resolved 3 days later by the insurance company reinstating my policy and the story goes all the way to page 4 where I've told the forum that it's resolved. However I'm dissapointed that my email to MSE went unanswered and I warn people to be extremely careful about accepting this advice to tweak your job title. In my case it was an innocent mistake rather than a deliberate tweaking, but tweak at your peril is my advice to you.
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Any comments or advice you people might have are welcome.

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Header reads:

Serious problem (claim refused by Swinton/Highway) with my insurance now created because I followed Martin's advice to be willing to adjust my job title.

Body of the email:

Hi there,

I recently got a new insurance policy with Swinton for my moped. The story is that I had a moped for 8 years, never had any problems or claims, then I wanted to changed mopeds, so I bought a 6 month old 09 model of the same bike. It was stolen just 7 weeks later, but as I knew it was worth more that my old one, I chose when I bought it to get comprehensive insurance through go compare, so I changed to Swinton when I bought the bike because they were offering a cheaper deal. My insurance company decided in their blatant attempt to get out of assisting me, to decide my policy was invalid from the start, because of my job title, which I'm sure you'll agree is ridiculous when you read below. I'm wondering whether you will now assist me to fight them as I feel they'll quickly cave with a little pressure other than from me. Otherwise if you're not willing to stand up for the advice you offer in job selection, then I feel you should urgently consider changing the advice and advising your readers to do everything they can to urgently correct their job titles to ensure they're not driving uninsured.

I feel somewhat lucky, my bike was stolen, the claim was just £850. However what if I'd run over a child and was being held responsible by the police and therefore desperately needed the policy to cover me? What then if the insurer does have grounds to claim the policy was invalid. I will explain further now, but I also enclose a scan of their letter for you to read. Please don't publish my name or address on your website if you use this letter which I agree you can as long as my privacy is protected from the general public.

Better explanation:

- I don't have a real job title, I'm self employed. I own property that I let out and I actively manage myself (because I can't afford agents fees). I work more than full time managing these properties, it feels like I never get a break.

- The job tiltle I used on go compare that seemed right at the time: Property Lettings Manager

- When I phoned the insurer to inform them there may be a claim unless the bike is recovered, they asked me to confirm what I do for a living. I replied, I'm a landlord and rent properties out for a living.

If you're as sensible as anyone else that I've spoken to about this, you'll quickly realise that there is barely a wafer of difference in these two job titles and in fact, my active role is managing the properties I let out, whereas in my opinion, landlord sounds like an inactive role, so Property Lettings Manager is entirely appropriate as far as I'm concerned.

- I don't kow if this is a coincidence, but since receiving this rejection letter, my go compare quotes are about 30% higher than they were, has the insurance company somehow put a black mark on me too? I was searching for quotes as I need to buy another bike now, last week Swinton was offering £212, but this week they're offering me £448. There is something seriously wrong about the way they've treated me here and if they've also done something that affects my insurance quotes, I am seriously annoyed with their behaviour, all to avoid doing what I paid them to do, provide me with insurance.

A small fact for you: When I look at go compare and get a quote with Property Lettings Manager and then another quote with Landlord as the job titles, the quotes come out as exactly the same amount of money. That shows that it's not a materially different thing and simply a get-out excuse for Swinton.

I would really appreciate if I have some assitance here and can be contacted on 07*** 747 *** if you like. I hope that you, the person reading this, realises the significance this has in comparison the the advice you're giving out.

Hoping to here from you.

...........My name....

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Our Reference: I
Incident Date: 10th November 2009
18th November 2009
Dear Mr
I refer to the above policy you arranged with us via your agent, Swinton-Dyer and Holmes, commencing on 8th September 2009.
All motor insurers require information to enable them to make a proper assessment of the premium to charge and the terms and conditions to apply. Most of the information needed is only known to the person seeking insurance and for this reason; there is a legal obligation upon the proposer to answer the questions fully and honestly at the time of arranging insurance. Where an insurer enters into a contract based upon inaccurate or misleading information that the proposer has knowingly provided in response to clear questions, the insurer is entitled to treat the policy null and void from its inception date, and to act as if that contract of insurance never existed.
When arranging your insurance, you were asked a series of questions by Swinton-Dyer and Holmes regarding details about yourself including your occupation. Subsequently they wrote to you with details of the insurance including a copy of the information you had provided, asking you to check the information contained on the Statement of Insurance and to advise them of any inaccuracies. We note that you advised us you are a manager in the property letting industry.
However, following routine investigations by our claims department in respect of the claim for the theft of your vehicle, we discovered that you are a landlord and that you rent out properties that you own.
We have checked with Swinton-Dyer and Holmes, who have confirmed that at no time before or after inception of your policy were they informed of the fact you are a property landlord. Had we been aware of this, we would not have agreed to give cover. In the circumstances, we are invoking our right to null and void the policy, meaning that the policy is deemed never to have taken effect.
Your brokers will contact you in due course to advise of any refund of premium that you may be due.

As your policy is has been deemed null and void, I regret to inform you that we will be declining to deal with your current claim.
Should your vehicle be found at a later date, any charges associated with its collection and storage will be your sole responsibility.
You are now required by the Road traffic Act 1988 to return your current Certificate of Motor Insurance and/or Temporary cover note in your possession, to this office immediately, as not to do so would be an offence under the Act.
Furthermore, we must also inform you that it is an offence under the Road traffic Act 1988 to leave, drive or otherwise permit use of a vehicle on a public road without valid motor insurance cover for your vehicle or risk prosecution.
I trust that I have clearly explained the reason for our decision but please do not hesitate to contact me should you require any further information.



Yours sincerely,




Lois Anthony
Claims Indemnity Department
Highway Insurance is part of the Liverpool Victoria group of companies.
All correspondence you receive from us in relation to your claim will now come from Liverpool Victoria, also known as LV=.

dacouch

A Landlord is a completely different job to a Property Letting Manager who would normally be an employee of an estate agent or an employee of a Landlord.

To be able to get Highway to change their decision you need to be able to prove that you did not deliberately miss lead them eg it was an innocent mistake AND that they would have accepted you as a client if you had declared the correct occupation.

If you can obtain quotations from them for the same policy details with your occupation declared as a Landlord this may help win your case (Assuming you can convince them you did not intentionally miss lead them)

raskazz

What do you tell people when they ask your occupation? I'd wager a fairly large amount that you would say 'landlord' rather than 'property letting manager'. I would say that there is much more than a 'wafer of difference' between the two.

A landlord owns and rents properties. A property letting manager works for a landlord or a letting agent and doesn't own the property concerned. They often lead substantially different lifestyles, hence it is reasonable for an insurer to rate them differently.

You are a landlord hence if the true facts were known to the insurer they would not have offered you cover, so even if the misrepresentation was inadvertent they can reject your claim.

I've always thought that this job picker thing was highly dubious and a little irresponsible. If the insurer finds out that you misrepresented your job to lower your premium then that is an instant policy voidance.

PollyLL

raskazz wrote: »

What do you tell people when they ask your occupation? I'd wager a fairly large amount that you would say 'landlord' rather than 'property letting manager'. I would say that there is much more than a 'wafer of difference' between the two.

A landlord owns and rents properties. A property letting manager works for a landlord or a letting agent and doesn't own the property concerned. They often lead substantially different lifestyles, hence it is reasonable for an insurer to rate them differently.

You are a landlord hence if the true facts were known to the insurer they would not have offered you cover, so even if the misrepresentation was inadvertent they can reject your claim.

I've always thought that this job picker thing was highly dubious and a little irresponsible. If the insurer finds out that you misrepresented your job to lower your premium then that is an instant policy voidance.

Well as is affirmed here in these two replies, landlord isn't a particularly well regarded occupation, so I don't go around telling people that I'm a landlord. What I tell people is that I manage a bunch of houses for a living. It's the bare truth despite the stigma that's atached to the word landlord.

As I said earlier, the two job titles make no difference to the quotation and the insurer using it in saying they wouldn't have offered cover is just a load of garbage to try to get out of paying the claim.

If I were a politician I'd tackle their industry as they so quick to take the premium, but so crafty in their ways to try to get out of their obligations. And no, it was never a money saving attempt to change my job title, it was an attempt to use a job title that was most appropriate to the work I actually do, managing properties let out.

I can't imagine why these two posts are so negative, only that it's the stigma coming out.

Try using Martin's job description picker. Apparently he thinks boiler maker is a possible substitue for landlord and Lettngs Manager is in there too.

raskazz

PollyLL wrote: »

As I said earlier, the two job titles make no difference to the quotation.

May I ask how you know this? Because Highway were quite clear and unambiguous in their letter:

"We have checked with Swinton-Dyer and Holmes, who have confirmed that at no time before or after inception of your policy were they informed of the fact you are a property landlord. Had we been aware of this, we would not have agreed to give cover."

It is all very well running a quote with Swinton but Swinton are the broker not the insurer. It may not affect the quote that you get with Swinton now but that quote is likely with an insurer other than Highway.

An much as you might protest, from any reasonable and objective viewpoint you are a landlord - and that is the most appropriate job description, not a 'property lettings manager' or anything else.

If, when asked, you tell people that you "manage a bunch of houses for a living", why did you answer "I'm a landlord and rent properties out for a living" when the insurer asked you what you do?