Insurance renewal problem

Help & Advice
1

I’ve had a disappointing experience with my insurance provider, perhaps my own fault. Would appreciate advise or opinion on the matter.

I received a renewal notice as my insurance coverage is expiring in a few weeks. I was pleased to see my premiums go down from prior year by a lot. The documentation reflected 3 years of NCB, which is the length of time I’ve had any motorbike insurance here in the UK. It did remind me that I should report a traffic incident i was involved in mid March.

The incident in brief was a hit and run. In traffic, on The Highway westbound in London. This was in the direction towards Tower Bridge approaching the BP petrol station on the left. A white transport van rear ended me while we were stopped in traffic. Thankfully at slow speed and there was no injury to me, and no damage to the bike other than a surface scratch on the bar end. As traffic was heavy, agreed to move to the petrol station to exchange details. Other bikers helped me get the bike up. At the petrol station, a few meters ahead of the incident i parked and waited for the van driver. He pulled in but continued to move back into traffic and left. I did what I thought was the right thing, snapped a phot to catch his registration and reported to the police online.

How it connects to insurance. I made no claims as there was no need on my policy. But the renewal letter prompted me to report the incident thinking it was the right thing. I received a revised renewal letter the day after, 3 days since the original renewal, with a premium bumped up by £300, reflecting the report i had made, and nullifying 3 years of NCB.

Was i wrong? Clearly not fair. Any advice?

2

What are you looking for here a fair solution or the legal solution?

Fair:
Go onto Comparethemarket, put in 3 years ncb and don’t declare an accident. You haven’t demonstrated that you are a higher risk to your insurance company by being rear ended by something that wasn’t your fault. The odds of that happening can be expressed as a function of mileage you ride and as such are already accounted for in your premium

Legal:
You should have declared this on the date, but yes disclosing to your insurer was the legal thing to do. Them bumping up your premium shouldn’t be legal as your risk coefficient let’s call it won’t have changed before and after disclosing such a thing, but hey they can do what they like.They’re just dicks.

Honestly, unless there had been actual damage to my bike I wouldn’t have called the police- these things happen

4

Thanks for the opinion. I think i read somewhere in the policy documentation that incidents should be reported within 120 days from the date of incident. Police did not actually arrive on the scene. Again perhaps wrong of me to do on the day. I reported the issue online. An investigator assigned to the case reached out once but never contacted me about concluding or closing it. It’s my first time dealing with an incident like this so I don’t think i handled it right albeit tried to be by the book.

Good point on not reporting it at all. I just thought that a police report being public record, it might come to question later on from insurer as “your failure to report this nullifies your coverage or means you owe us more premium”. In effect by doing so they have done the latter immediately.

5

I’ve done this direct with Bennetts and the proposed rate is better than either of the renewals. By the way my current insurer is RAC.

6

Hoenstly now you have told your insurer about it I have no idea whether under GDPR other insurers can access this under normal circumstances. Fully expect it to come up if you have an accident though?

Important to note, because a) there was no investigation done and b) the other party was not found this does go down as a “fault accident” even though your ncb won’t be affected as there was no claim made and it wasn’t actually your fault!

7

Nevertheless it is what they call in the jargon ‘a notifiable event’, and technically should be notified to your insurers.

Even if you subsequently make no claim it will count against you because they now consider you to be more risk than you previously were. Sad but true.

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8

I think there is a lot of information sharing these days.

9

Yup I had a few of those back in the day. Always had to declare them in an case someone started a claim.

It was a battle to get them on without bumping premiums.

This is the first year since 2010 I have to declare nothing at all

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10

There appears to be an open investigation by the Met police since i reported it. If they closed it, i have not been notified. It felt like the right thing to do (by Highway Code?!) as the van driver sped off without exchanging details with me.

11

I’m not saying reporting it to the police was wrong, it’s very much the right thing to do. The police definitely can’t share that with insurance legally afaik. Insurance companies aren’t a law unto themselves. I personally wouldn’t have bothered with a small hit and run. That said back in january someone rammed me with the car, got out and we had a fight. His partner got out as I was cleaning the tarmac with him so I let him go but I reported him to the police as I felt he was a danger to the public. Unless you go to court and the incident becomes public record I don’t know how your insurance company would find out

If you want to live by fair insurance premiums you’re going to have to bend the rules, this will probably inflame everyone but otherwise you are just going to get penalised and walked all over for other people’s shit

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12

Tell them it’s a closed case and a non fault, non claim incident. That’ll leave a marker but should bring the premium down.

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13

Have written to them by email requesting this. Up to 5 days to respond. Have some time before renewal gets charged. Will ring them after the bank holiday as well.

Thanks all for the opinions and advice.

14

Make sure it dealt with before the renewal, other wise they don’t often honour a quote once it passed as they class the policy as lasped and then can only create a new policy for you.
I got stung a couple of years ago on this and they wanted to charge me an extra £100 to setup.
Naturally I took my business elsewhere.

15

@stroker28 If you write to the insurers, it is worth reminding them that in law you have not and were not involved in a reportable accident.

To be a reportable crash under the road traffic act it states that an accident is deemed to have occurred if owing to the presence of a motor vehicle -

Injury or damage is caused to a third party

(it then goes on about the compliance requirements)

But based on what you say, no accident occurred in law, (that’s reportable anyway) the other driver committed offences separate to being involved in a crash, and therefore you are not obligated to report anything to the insurers

If they still insist that you failed to comply or that you were involved in a reportable accident, then they are in breach of their own rules and if you wanted would be justified in reporting it to the ombudsman, although I guess you would just take your business elsewhere.

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16

I did have a read of what’s on the ombudsman’s website on this topic. It’s still tricky as there is good faith compliance to law vs what is fair but subjective vs what is policy that insurance takers sign up to.

Thankfully a few phone calls and emails after, i got my NCB back. The renewal notice came through but the underwriter has changed. Still can’t complain as everything else is as expected.

Thanks to all for what you have shared here. Sometimes just useful to have others to bounce ideas with.

1 Like
17

First up on google search. Sharing for reference. Glad i can avoid having to go down any route that requires filing dispute etc.

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18

There is a national insurance NCB database.

19

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

What’s Cue?

Cue stands for the Claims and Underwriting Exchange (Cue). It’s a huge database of incidents that may or may not have led to an insurance claim.

Most home, travel and car insurance providers submit information to Cue.

Key points

  • Cue stands for the Claims and Underwriting Exchange and it’s a database of incidents reported to insurance companies
  • Cue helps detect fraudulent claims, keeping car insurance prices down
  • Insurers can use Cue to calculate insurance costs, based on claims history

It was created in 1994 as a measure to prevent fraudulent or multiple insurance claims, which helps keep the cost down for honest policyholders.

What information does Cue hold about you?

CUE stores any insurance claims you’ve made over the past six years, including car accidents, break-ins and thefts from your home, as well as any substantial personal injuries you’ve suffered.

It might also include information about relatively minor incidents, such as a damaged indicator light, that have been reported to insurers.

If you want to know what information Cue has about you, you can request it from the Motor Insurance Bureau (MIB) using its subject access form.

And if you believe Cue is storing incorrect information about you, you should contact the insurer that you believe sent the incorrect data, or the MIB.

How insurers use Cue

Cue was originally set up to help insurers exchange claim information, but the way it’s used has changed.

They used to just check against the database during a claim to make sure that previous information disclosed by the customer was correct. It meant that if something hadn’t been disclosed, then the insurer wouldn’t pay out on the current claim.

But insurers have started using the database when you buy insurance, or even when you get a quote. They do this to work out the right price for your car insurance - as well as factors such as your age, address and car model.

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