Car insurance void: please help!

Whenever you are unhappy with your insurer the first route is to complain in line with their complaints procedure


Then if the reply is unsatisfactory or they ignore you for 8 weeks then you can escalate to the FOS for their adjudication all at no cost to you


If you get nowhere with the FOS then your last option is legal action, though that will involve you in some cost!

brooksyz wrote: »

They have just emailed me to say that they will not pay out but have not advised me that the policy has been completely cancelled.


I will go down the complaint route thank you for the advice.


I stupidly told them when I called to report the incident.

Actually, this is not stupid, it is honest, and I think you can use your honesty to your advantage in your complaint. If you portray this as an honest mistake, and point out that you did not try to conceal the fact the accident happened when you were commuting, I think yourr complaint stands a greater change of being decided in your favour. If you are young, or have only had motor insurance for a couple of years, I would mention this. if you can, you should address the question of if this accident had not occured and you had not told them you were commuting, when would you have told them? What would have been the trigger?

I think you also need to explain to the third-party involved about the problem; that it was an honest mistake that you were not insured. You haven't said who is liable for the accident. Your insurance company might give you some advice here: if you can find a way to ask the question, you might ask them, if you were going to cover this accident how would you decide the liability: am I completely to blame or there an arguement for a 50:50 or other split of the liability? If you can get their insight/expertise, it will help withh negotiating with the third-party. You might even ask a solictor to help with the negotiation if you think that the other party is liable to some degree.

Although you are aware of what you did wrong, the other driver may also be aware that they contributed to the accident. I would review your recollection of how the accident happened with another experienced driver to see if you can see anything that the other party did to cause the accident.

The other driver deserves to have a professional repair to their car if you are fully liable for the accident; you might need to take out a bank loan (or a loan from a family member) to pay for this. If you cannot get a loan and cannot pay for the repairs that you are liable for, you might be as well to admit this to the third-party, but really you need to do everthing you can to pay; sell your car if you need to. It would not be unreasonable to ask the third-party to get two estimates for the repairs.

If they admit that they are partially laible, then you only need to pay them a proportion of the estimate. They can decide if they want to foot the difference or have a cheaper, or no repair done to their car. If the car is old, and they take pity on you, you might end up only having to give them a token amount of money.

Hope this helps. Good luck with it.

brooksyz wrote: »

Hi,


I moved jobs 2 weeks ago and forgot to tell my insurers that my policy would now include commuting.


I was involved in a minor accident a few days ago and it was my fault.


My insurers have voided my policy and will not pay the third party costs and i'm terrified this could cost me a fortune.


Can someone please advise?

Hi, it was wrong not to declare the change of circumstances but your insurers were wrong to void the policy. There are very clear guidelines issued by the Ombudsman about how insurers should respond to such circumstances and your insurers are "trying it on".

The overiding rule is to treat customers fairly, and in similar complaints such as yours there are clear tests to decide whether insurance can be voided for non-disclosure and in simple terms if it was purposeful or grossly negligent then that might be reasons to void the policy. You simply didn't tell them promptly and had an accident around 10 days after your change of crcumsntace. You were not a driver drving around without having bought insurance it was careless- and something many might do - that's all. In this situation they should have - assuming that they would have covered you if you had informed them have for example sought to charge you the correct premium or scales back the cover by the percentage of the underpaid premium.

You should write them a short letter of complaint telling them that you feel that you were careless not telling them straight away fo your change of circumstances but it wasn't purposeful but and that you feel that their response will be seen as unfair by the Ombudsman if you were to complain. Ask for them to reconsider. There is a better than evens chance that they will. You should also double check to see whether you were in fact covered or not as non-business motor insurance often covers commuting to your normal place of work.

The above should sort it but if the accident is serious and the claim high you are in fact still covered as a back-stop by the Motor Insureasu Bureau to which all motor insurers contribute to cover situations such as this if there is no insurance. In this situation in extreme circumstances they might pick up the shortfall. In fact a claim by the other party to the MIB is likely to end with the MIB suggesting to the insurer that they really should not have voided the policy ....;)

https://www.mib.org.uk/

One thing at a time. Complain first. Good luck.