Involve Insurance or not?

Author
Discussion

vanordinaire

Original Poster:

3,701 posts

162 months

Saturday 23rd May 2015
quotequote all
My 18 year old new driver daughter had a bump today in my wife's car. Her fault, she drifted out of her lane and scuffed along the side of another car. My daughter agreed she is entirely to blame and the other driver kindly offered to let my daughter(or me to be more accurate) pay for her repairs instead of involving insurance.
I'm waiting for an estimate for the other car's repairs before making a decision on whether this is the sensible option.
My question is
'Roughly what would the break even point be for me to do this? and
how much is a clean record worth in cash?'

The policy has a £400 excess when my daughter is driving but this is irrelevant as it's an old Fiesta which I can just fix myself. There is no No Claims Bonus on this policy and the premium was about £750 per annum.

aw51 121565

4,771 posts

233 months

Saturday 23rd May 2015
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Your daughter is obliged to tell her insurer she has had a prang; ditto any insurer where she is a named driver has a right to know about said prang, and another situation (or two) rings a bell but I am posting under teh influenshe wink .

It might be worth claiming on the insurance (if only to allow for whiplash claims, he says cynically), in the light of my first paragraph... It's also not unknown for insurance companies to chase up old accidents following another claim/incident ( or a simple renewal, the sods have a database wink ), though I cannot cite this - apart from personal experience when starting a new policy last year and they were aware of a non-fault incident in a car park 8 years earlier which I admitted and they confirmed - at this time smile .

"Good faith" = honesty? wink

BertBert

19,039 posts

211 months

Saturday 23rd May 2015
quotequote all
Sorry to go off topic, but what on earth are you taking about with 8 year old claims history? And how is that relevant to the op?

To the op, it's pretty much impossible to do the sums of how much the claim will affect your premium. I'm impressed with 750 for a policy with no no claims and having a new driver on it.

In your position if be thinking £500, pay. £1000 go through insurance.

Hth
Bert

ging84

8,897 posts

146 months

Saturday 23rd May 2015
quotequote all
i cannot imagine the repair bill for a car being hit by another drifting out of thier lane ever being less than £1k, the damage can be relatively minor, but across a big area and multiple panels
Only way it could real get settled for less if the car she hit was also a shed and the owner is happy to accept a cash settlement

Geekman

2,863 posts

146 months

Saturday 23rd May 2015
quotequote all
If she's 18, a clean record is worth an enormous amount. With a fault claim against her I wouldn't be surprised if her insurance cost doubled next year. If the repair was under £1k, I personally wouldn't tell them and just pay the other driver.

vanordinaire

Original Poster:

3,701 posts

162 months

Saturday 23rd May 2015
quotequote all
Geekman said:
If she's 18, a clean record is worth an enormous amount. With a fault claim against her I wouldn't be surprised if her insurance cost doubled next year. If the repair was under £1k, I personally wouldn't tell them and just pay the other driver.
That is roughly what I'm thinking, the other car is an 07 Citroen C1, paint scuff all the way along, from the front wing to the rear bumper, physical damage limited to missing mirror and the rear bumper popped off one bracket.

LoonR1

26,988 posts

177 months

Saturday 23rd May 2015
quotequote all
1. There is £0 excess on a claim by a third party, so if you were to repair your own and let the insurance pay for their repair, the it would cost you £0 this policy year.
2. Whose policy is it? Do you have NCD? If none, the you have none to lose, so that's another moot point
3. Nobody at all can tell you how much your premium will rise next year as there are too many variables. You will only know for definite when it's renewal time and you can shop around. Just run it through one of the price comparison sites now for an idea if you want, but a lot could change between now and then.
4. You don't have to tell your insurer if you deal outside insurance. Technically you should, but practically speaking, nobody at all does. If neither of you do tell them then there is no record to,store on a database.
5. The idiot claiming that someone asked about an 8 year old claim is talking bks. Insurers ask about 3 or 5 years, nobody goes back 8 years at all.

kiethton

13,895 posts

180 months

Saturday 23rd May 2015
quotequote all
That'll be over a grand I reckon.

If the panels are anything more than just scuffed (slightly dented) the garage will often be wanting to replace. Also they'll get charged retail labour rates, parts mark ups etc...

And they have the voice of which body shop they want to use... Somebody hit me a few years back, little scuff/minor set on rear wing and back bumper and the bill was over £7k for work alone, excluding courtesy cars etc.

pboyall

176 posts

121 months

Saturday 23rd May 2015
quotequote all
The C1 from memory has a limited number of panels so the repair won't be a case of two doors or a wing, but instead will basically require half the car to be repaired.

Now, that means that going through insurance it would be a write-off, so the other driver has their own incentive not to claim. I'd look up the cost of a C1 of the same age and condition - that's going to be how much you are on the hook for. Less a bit for having a claim against them etc. So probably £1500-2000.

Then set that against your daughter costing you £2000+ next year on the insurance.

But you really should inform your insurers there has been an "incident" if for no other reason than if your daughter has managed to "drift out of lane" then there seems a reasonable probability that within the year she'll also have had a tree jump out in front of her, or someone will "reverse into her". Next time the car she hits might be expensive - and you don't want to find the insurers getting hissy over covering the cost of repairing someone's M5.

An "incident" isn't going to be as damaging to the premium as a "claim". Since all you really have to say, basically, is that she brought the car back missing a wing mirror.

LoonR1

26,988 posts

177 months

Saturday 23rd May 2015
quotequote all
pboyall said:
The C1 from memory has a limited number of panels so the repair won't be a case of two doors or a wing, but instead will basically require half the car to be repaired.

Now, that means that going through insurance it would be a write-off, so the other driver has their own incentive not to claim. I'd look up the cost of a C1 of the same age and condition - that's going to be how much you are on the hook for. Less a bit for having a claim against them etc. So probably £1500-2000.

Then set that against your daughter costing you £2000+ next year on the insurance.

But you really should inform your insurers there has been an "incident" if for no other reason than if your daughter has managed to "drift out of lane" then there seems a reasonable probability that within the year she'll also have had a tree jump out in front of her, or someone will "reverse into her". Next time the car she hits might be expensive - and you don't want to find the insurers getting hissy over covering the cost of repairing someone's M5.

An "incident" isn't going to be as damaging to the premium as a "claim". Since all you really have to say, basically, is that she brought the car back missing a wing mirror.
Why is there an incentive for the other driver not to claim if his car is a write off?

Why would insurers get "hissy" over repairing any car? Why does an expensive car change things?

Explain the difference between an incident and a claim. How do you think it's logged differently?

Why do you promote telling the insurer and then suggest lying to them?

Where do you get this drivel from?


davepoth

29,395 posts

199 months

Saturday 23rd May 2015
quotequote all
The repair figure for the other person's car might be a bit scary.

I once scraped my mum's car on a gatepost many years ago. The local insurance repair place quoted £1100, which included a new door and a partial respray. the smart repair place sorted it out for a bit under £200 if memory serves.

I would be inclined to put it through the insurance, but tell your daughter she needs to pay for her own car in future.


pboyall

176 posts

121 months

Saturday 23rd May 2015
quotequote all
LoonR1 said:
Why is there an incentive for the other driver not to claim if his car is a write off?

Why would insurers get "hissy" over repairing any car? Why does an expensive car change things?

Explain the difference between an incident and a claim. How do you think it's logged differently?

Why do you promote telling the insurer and then suggest lying to them?

Where do you get this drivel from?
I grant you are more experienced here but

a) A £1500 car you have had from new and looked after is going to be worth more *to you* than any random banger. Even though to the insurer it is the same. So if you are the owner of the £1500 well-kept car, you won't want to have it written off - to be replaced by one of unknown provenance - if you can help it

b) As you know, the insurer can't repudiate third party claims - but if the undisclosed incident is discovered then I leave it to you to tell me what the insurer is likely to do

c) An incident doesn't involve any costs. A claim does. So when you renew, there will be less effect on the premium. Possibly marginal, possibly not. I am not an underwriter.

d) I never said lie, I simply pointed out that insurers are not as interested in "incidents" where no claim is made.

LoonR1

26,988 posts

177 months

Saturday 23rd May 2015
quotequote all
pboyall said:
I grant you are more experienced here but

a) A £1500 car you have had from new and looked after is going to be worth more *to you* than any random banger. Even though to the insurer it is the same. So if you are the owner of the £1500 well-kept car, you won't want to have it written off - to be replaced by one of unknown provenance - if you can help it

b) As you know, the insurer can't repudiate third party claims - but if the undisclosed incident is discovered then I leave it to you to tell me what the insurer is likely to do

c) An incident doesn't involve any costs. A claim does. So when you renew, there will be less effect on the premium. Possibly marginal, possibly not. I am not an underwriter.

d) I never said lie, I simply pointed out that insurers are not as interested in "incidents" where no claim is made.
a) not everyone is a petrolhead. Many more people care very little about their car and would take a payout and buy another quite happily. Big assumption that he's owned it from new as well.

b) they'll either find it at inception (although I've no idea how if neither party claims via their insurer), or they won't find it at all. Even if they did find out at claim stage that wouldn't be sufficient to reduce / repudiate any claim for the policyholder and especially not for a third party

c) Rubbish. You can't make that assumption for the market. In any event, far too many people talk about "underwriters". These guys rarely exist nowadays. Data is input and a premium is output. The underwriter sets high level parameters and the IT guys do the rest. It is virtually unheard of for an underwriter to review any mainstream personal lines policy

d) but you advised to inform of the incident, but pretend it was a missing wing mirror, which is a blatant lie.

KFC

3,687 posts

130 months

Saturday 23rd May 2015
quotequote all
Geekman said:
If she's 18, a clean record is worth an enormous amount. With a fault claim against her I wouldn't be surprised if her insurance cost doubled next year. If the repair was under £1k, I personally wouldn't tell them and just pay the other driver.
I'd pay a £972.50 bill in an alternate universe where it was guaranteed she wasn't going to get in any other scrapes. It'd be sickening to pay up to a grand then for her to do something else in a few months and ruin the clean record anyway.


Personally I'd just go through the insurance for any 'real' incident... thats what its there for.

If its a knocked off wing mirror or reversed into someone at 2mph then fair enough, but outside of that they can deal with the insurance.

pboyall

176 posts

121 months

Saturday 23rd May 2015
quotequote all
a) Maybe you're right, maybe not. Hard to say, but since the other party has taken repair over write off it's moot

b) Really? What about this scenario: Next year Daughter drifts out of lane again, but this time to the left. Into one of those drainage ditches you get hidden in verges. Flips the car. Police called. "Don't worry miss, bet it's a shock having your first accident" "Oh no, I crashed last year too". Cop will probably let it slide, but depends on how much investigation and report they have to do and if there is going to be a Due care charge or whatever. It may get written up and then someone else notes it. Ditto for if daughter is phoned by the insurance assessor and lets it slip - I presume you have encountered teenage females and the generalised speed at which they engage mouths before brains ;-) As I said and you did too, insurer can't repudiate - but I did ask you what you thought they would do. Cancel the policy? That makes it hard to get cover in future. Add a massive (unpayable) extra amount to continue the cover?

c) I used to write code for a general insurer so am aware that cost of previous claims was one of the parameters in the formula. We still had actuaries in the life part in those days though. If you do a quote with a £6000 claim and a quote with a £0 claim ... what do you think the premium different is?

d) Well we can agree to differ, you infer I said "lie" while I felt that I was only highlighting that in my (admittedly distant) experience the insurer wasn't interested in asking any questions about a non-claim incident. I would picture the conversation being along the lines of

"My daughter has had an accident, but we aren't claiming"
"Anyone injured? Police attended?"
"No"
"Thanks for letting us know"

Now, you might feel that the whole "utmost good faith" thing requires a complete description of every detail, but in reality all that anyone can say about it incident, absent statements etc. is "She and another woman hit each other".

LoonR1

26,988 posts

177 months

Saturday 23rd May 2015
quotequote all
pboyall said:
a) Maybe you're right, maybe not. Hard to say, but since the other party has taken repair over write off it's moot

b) Really? What about this scenario: Next year Daughter drifts out of lane again, but this time to the left. Into one of those drainage ditches you get hidden in verges. Flips the car. Police called. "Don't worry miss, bet it's a shock having your first accident" "Oh no, I crashed last year too". Cop will probably let it slide, but depends on how much investigation and report they have to do and if there is going to be a Due care charge or whatever. It may get written up and then someone else notes it. Ditto for if daughter is phoned by the insurance assessor and lets it slip - I presume you have encountered teenage females and the generalised speed at which they engage mouths before brains ;-) As I said and you did too, insurer can't repudiate - but I did ask you what you thought they would do. Cancel the policy? That makes it hard to get cover in future. Add a massive (unpayable) extra amount to continue the cover?

c) I used to write code for a general insurer so am aware that cost of previous claims was one of the parameters in the formula. We still had actuaries in the life part in those days though. If you do a quote with a £6000 claim and a quote with a £0 claim ... what do you think the premium different is?

d) Well we can agree to differ, you infer I said "lie" while I felt that I was only highlighting that in my (admittedly distant) experience the insurer wasn't interested in asking any questions about a non-claim incident. I would picture the conversation being along the lines of

"My daughter has had an accident, but we aren't claiming"
"Anyone injured? Police attended?"
"No"
"Thanks for letting us know"

Now, you might feel that the whole "utmost good faith" thing requires a complete description of every detail, but in reality all that anyone can say about it incident, absent statements etc. is "She and another woman hit each other".
A. I am right
7. The claim would be paid in full. End of. Your police scenario is farcical and completely irrelevant. Look up the difference between criminal and civil law
iivxm) personal
Lines policies are and always have been NCD rated and nothing to do with the value of a claim. That is reserved for Commercial Lines policies. Don't bother with the question around why do insurers ask for the cost of a claim. They don't. Price comparison websites do for no good reason.
---) you suggested she lies. Again stop referencing the police and go back and look up the difference between a civil matter and a criminal one.

TwigtheWonderkid

43,367 posts

150 months

Saturday 23rd May 2015
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LoonR1 said:
Where do you get this drivel from?
Wherever it is, there seems to be no shortage of supply!

Jujuuk68

363 posts

157 months

Sunday 24th May 2015
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"4. You don't have to tell your insurer if you deal outside insurance. Technically you should, but practically speaking, nobody at all does. If neither of you do tell them then there is no record to,store on a database. "

To be honest, this is poor advice.

Motor insurers are plagued these days, by claimants, who didn't tell their insurers about tiny bumps, 1-3 years ago, who possibly even settled privately, or made very modest claims against third party insurers for damage claims, never mentioning any injury in several conversations.

The claimants come back for a second bite at the cherry, usually from the same handful of solicitors, for personal injury claims, who have their own firms responsible for the spam texting/cold calls to avoid Law Society regulations.

As the insurers were not notified properly at the time, proper enquiries could and were not undertaken, (such as a good statement from the insured, witnesses, ect as a statement of truth from a Claims inspector, or an engineering report), to protect the policyholders interests, and the claims "have to get paid" as there is no evidence (policyholders either sold the vehicle on, suffered a further incident or had repairs done, or simply cannot be traced any longer to refute the claims).

I've had 3 like this given to me in the last fortnight to investigate.

Don't forget, the claimant who settled privately for repairs is surprisingly suseptible two or three years down the line, to those calls/spam texts where people are advised on a positive response to admission of an impact of any sort, how to claim. How much they can expect for going through with the "lie", How to tell the medical expert what their injuries were, to ensure a payment and a payout for legal costs. And don't the Liverpool and Birkenhead courts lap up the testimony of claimants who never mentioned injury, never saw a medical expert, never saw a GP, never sought treatment, in favour of those firms who keep the courts afloat in court fees.

You should generally, always tell an insurer - Its in your terms and conditions. The best way to keep premiums down is not to hit people, not to fail to tell people afterwards.

KFC

3,687 posts

130 months

Sunday 24th May 2015
quotequote all
Or if you're going to settle something in cash do it in a manner that you can just deny it 18 months later if they try and hit you with whiplash or whatever.

LoonR1

26,988 posts

177 months

Sunday 24th May 2015
quotequote all
Jujuuk68 said:
"4. You don't have to tell your insurer if you deal outside insurance. Technically you should, but practically speaking, nobody at all does. If neither of you do tell them then there is no record to,store on a database. "

To be honest, this is poor advice.

Motor insurers are plagued these days, by claimants, who didn't tell their insurers about tiny bumps, 1-3 years ago, who possibly even settled privately, or made very modest claims against third party insurers for damage claims, never mentioning any injury in several conversations.

The claimants come back for a second bite at the cherry, usually from the same handful of solicitors, for personal injury claims, who have their own firms responsible for the spam texting/cold calls to avoid Law Society regulations.

As the insurers were not notified properly at the time, proper enquiries could and were not undertaken, (such as a good statement from the insured, witnesses, ect as a statement of truth from a Claims inspector, or an engineering report), to protect the policyholders interests, and the claims "have to get paid" as there is no evidence (policyholders either sold the vehicle on, suffered a further incident or had repairs done, or simply cannot be traced any longer to refute the claims).

I've had 3 like this given to me in the last fortnight to investigate.

Don't forget, the claimant who settled privately for repairs is surprisingly suseptible two or three years down the line, to those calls/spam texts where people are advised on a positive response to admission of an impact of any sort, how to claim. How much they can expect for going through with the "lie", How to tell the medical expert what their injuries were, to ensure a payment and a payout for legal costs. And don't the Liverpool and Birkenhead courts lap up the testimony of claimants who never mentioned injury, never saw a medical expert, never saw a GP, never sought treatment, in favour of those firms who keep the courts afloat in court fees.

You should generally, always tell an insurer - Its in your terms and conditions. The best way to keep premiums down is not to hit people, not to fail to tell people afterwards.
In a nutshell my statement "practically speaking nobody does" is right then, especially as you continue to receive these claims. I know you're an injury claims handler, for DLG IIRC, but let's not con ourselves here. The issue remains that there is zero incentive to report an incident for a customer and the downside of not reporting should an injury claim be made in the following 3 years is negligible.

Oh and DLG has a particularly poor notification record, in fact it's shocking for a personal lines business and only comparable to a commercial lines set up IMO. Maybe there's something for your claims leadership team to look at and do something, rather than the procrastination so prevalent in that business.