Minimising impact of non-fault claims
Discussion
Hi All, after some advice about making non-fault insurance claims...
So 3 months ago, my wife's Merc (65 plate c350e on a contract hire FWIW) was hit from behind whilst stationary and I was driving. Fairly minor damage. Other party accepted liability, I reported it to my insurer, claim got processed, car got repaired and I thought that was the end of it. 2 weeks ago I had to renew my insurance policies and to my surprise, the addition of a non fault claim has added nearly £200 additional premium across my 3 policies.. Barely more than the repair would have been. Certainly after you factor in 2 or 3 years' worth of increased premiums it would work out cheaper just to have paid for the repair myself, even though it wasn't remotely my fault.
So unfortunately, today the car has been hit whilst parked by one of our neighbours. The offender's car is a company car so he is not remotely interested in paying for the repair out of pocket and keeping it off the insurance. There is a deep dent to the front wing, so probably looking at £300-£500 all in for the repair at a guess, maybe more if the wing has to be replaced.
Is there any way of proceeding with a claim and minimising the affect on my policies? It is a ridiculous situation that a second non-fault accident might render my other policies unaffordable.....
Any advice appreciated.
So 3 months ago, my wife's Merc (65 plate c350e on a contract hire FWIW) was hit from behind whilst stationary and I was driving. Fairly minor damage. Other party accepted liability, I reported it to my insurer, claim got processed, car got repaired and I thought that was the end of it. 2 weeks ago I had to renew my insurance policies and to my surprise, the addition of a non fault claim has added nearly £200 additional premium across my 3 policies.. Barely more than the repair would have been. Certainly after you factor in 2 or 3 years' worth of increased premiums it would work out cheaper just to have paid for the repair myself, even though it wasn't remotely my fault.
So unfortunately, today the car has been hit whilst parked by one of our neighbours. The offender's car is a company car so he is not remotely interested in paying for the repair out of pocket and keeping it off the insurance. There is a deep dent to the front wing, so probably looking at £300-£500 all in for the repair at a guess, maybe more if the wing has to be replaced.
Is there any way of proceeding with a claim and minimising the affect on my policies? It is a ridiculous situation that a second non-fault accident might render my other policies unaffordable.....
Any advice appreciated.
stanglish said:
This is the way the market is heading and it is ridiculous. To be fair when they bumped your premiums up did you shop around and manage to get it dropped again? This is what happened with mine - did the usual price comparison then used that to get the current company to match, not just discount.
Tried to explain this to the other half before (about non fault claims having a huge impact) and she refuses to believe it, stubbornly telling me the only thing that matters is no-claims.
Yeah I did, adding the non-fault claim to my record had basically the same affect with every insurer I tried, so my renewal was still cheaper than I could get elsewhere. (Which is actually the first time that's happened, normally I switch around every year.) Insurer is Esure at the moment.Tried to explain this to the other half before (about non fault claims having a huge impact) and she refuses to believe it, stubbornly telling me the only thing that matters is no-claims.
Edited by fourspoons on Saturday 28th May 16:53
Thanks all. To be honest, I understand the reasons for my previous increase in premium so I wasn't really questioning or complaining about that. I also know better than to expect any sympathy from this forum lol...
My question was if there was a better or different way to go about pursuing a claim or if anyone else in the same predicament had ended up paying for repairs themselves as opposed to making a non-fault claim and whether they thought that had worked out in their favour in the long run.....
My question was if there was a better or different way to go about pursuing a claim or if anyone else in the same predicament had ended up paying for repairs themselves as opposed to making a non-fault claim and whether they thought that had worked out in their favour in the long run.....
Ozzie Osmond said:
Unfortunately it's just the way the system works. The statistics say that people who have "incidents" are more likely to have "incidents", regardless of fault.
At the end of the day it's a "no claims bonus", not a "no fault bonus".
Indeed I understand that perfectly, However I have not made any claim in either case, only the third party has but I am significantly out of pocket...At the end of the day it's a "no claims bonus", not a "no fault bonus".
TooMany2cvs said:
How on earth did your neighbour hit your car while it was parked in your drive? What was your neighbour doing in your drive in the first place?
It's a large shared driveway in between the two houses in a small circular cul-de-sac. I think he was doing a three point turn or something.I was annoyed of course but fair play to him for knocking on the door and fessing up..
kiethton said:
It sucks but don't think you can do anything about it.
At 21 I had a BMW 335i, all good for the first 6 months, after renewing the policy I was then hit in the side by somebody pulling out without looking and 6 months later I was rear ended whilst stopped. My insurance went from £800 to £2400, no where would insure me any more, without either claim it had actually fallen to £750....
I had to sell the car and crystallize a pretty substantial loss :/
That stinks. As a former 335i owner as well, you have my sympathy.At 21 I had a BMW 335i, all good for the first 6 months, after renewing the policy I was then hit in the side by somebody pulling out without looking and 6 months later I was rear ended whilst stopped. My insurance went from £800 to £2400, no where would insure me any more, without either claim it had actually fallen to £750....
I had to sell the car and crystallize a pretty substantial loss :/
TooMany2cvs said:
But it's not private and exclusively available for use by your household...
LOL. Well my half of it is. Unfortunately my neighbour overstepped his boundary on this occasion. Is any driveway exclusively available for the household? Unless you have a security gate at the end and never ever let anyone else in?
Monty Python said:
The insurance company probably think that since your neighbour has hit your car once the chances of it happening again have increased.
Indeed that may be true, let's for arguments sake say he's suddenly become the world's worst driver and is regularly bashing in to things. I still don't see how they can justify an increase to my premiums. He can ram my car every week and it's only ever his insurance that will have to pay out any money. Even if I'm hit and the driver drives off or is uninsured, they say it won't affect my bonus and the insurer claims it back through the MiB...
Saying that someone hitting me makes me more likely to cause a fault accident is dubious at best to my mind.
Edited by fourspoons on Tuesday 31st May 11:10
Prof Prolapse said:
I don't understand, if it's not your fault why are you making a claim on your insurance?
I'd understood, "non-fault claim", meant it was not your fault, but the costs could not be recovered elsewhere so your own insurer pays it. Whereas if you're shunted from behind you don't make a claim on your insurance?
Is this not the case?
Even if you don't make a claim via your insurer, you are still the driver in a non-fault accident. Even if you don't tell them, they have 'the database' that knows, presumably fed information by which ever insurer does pay out. This is what just happened to me at my last renewal. I didn't even think to declare it and they flagged it up.I'd understood, "non-fault claim", meant it was not your fault, but the costs could not be recovered elsewhere so your own insurer pays it. Whereas if you're shunted from behind you don't make a claim on your insurance?
Is this not the case?
TwigtheWonderkid said:
Total rubbish. Of course it's not a lottery. If you live in a busy narrow road, you're far more likely to get hit whilst parked. In this case the OP has a shared driveway. That makes him more likely to get hit than if he had his own driveway.
I think there are too many variables to make a sweeping statement like that. In my case, this is the first incident in 25 years of living here. My best mate lives in a house where they have a completely private driveway but are shuffling their households' three cars around all the time and constantly scraping bumpers..
bigbob77 said:
One of our cars was hit while parked in a car park - we weren't there. There was a witness and the other drive accepted full liability straight away.
It still added a couple of hundred to our insurance.
I found that there are a couple of insurance companies who don't care about non-fault claims. We went with LV. They don't even ask for the details of non-fault claims.
Thanks for that I will make sure to give LV a look.It still added a couple of hundred to our insurance.
I found that there are a couple of insurance companies who don't care about non-fault claims. We went with LV. They don't even ask for the details of non-fault claims.
TwigtheWonderkid said:
But as a result of the claim, they now know he has a shared drive, which is a higher risk than a non shared drive. So they are reassessing his premium.
The non fault claim has shown he's a higher risk going forward. But he always was, the only difference is that now they know.
That's different from being penalised for someone else's mistake.
Sorry mate that's nonsense. They know nothing of the sort. No information about the exact layout of mine and my neighbours driveways have been declared or requested. For all they know, the third party could have been visiting my house and using my private driveway legitimately. Or maybe it was the UPS guy. Does that make me a justifiably higher risk because they now know I buy things off ebay?The non fault claim has shown he's a higher risk going forward. But he always was, the only difference is that now they know.
That's different from being penalised for someone else's mistake.
I think everyone that's done GCSE maths knows that you can manipulate statistics to prove virtually any hypothesis you like. So insurance companies will use just about anything they can think of to take our premiums for a hike.
TwigtheWonderkid said:
So perhaps I'm a better risk going forward?
A better risk at not getting hit by a third party perhaps yes. But the point is why should that affect the premium. Neither your nor the previous poster's insurers have incurred any loss whatsoever in either case.What you seem to be saying is that the fact you've not had a non-fault claim would make you less likely to make an at fault claim, which is a stretch of logic at best.
jamiebae said:
I can't multi quote on an iPad but I'll attempt to respond to some of these.....
If you run a retrospective test on 1m UK drivers, take 500k with a non fault claim and 500k without the ones with a non fault claim will have more subsequent non fault claims than those without.
All your other points seem to suggest insurers should price in the risk after the event has happened. If you do that you'd be out of business very quickly as you can't rely on customers renewing each year, so in your example the insurer would pay out (having not priced in the risk) and then when they tried to the next year and you left they'd be out of pocket. Pricing of risk is what insurers do, premiums aren't regulated and if the insurer doesn't want the business they'll quote you £10k.
If your premium drops after a non fault accident it's because another rating factor has changed to offset it - gone from 19 to 20 years old, moved from Moss Side to Swanage, gone from zero to one year NCB or similar. Alternatively you've changed insurer so the comparison isn't really valid.
Insurance isn't a racket, and is mandatory for a reason - if you have an accident you can't afford to pay £millions of medical bills when someone ends up permanently disabled as a result. If you don't like it then move to a country where it isn't required.
OK I think the arguments are running at cross purposes here. We all understand basically how risks are rated. If you run a retrospective test on 1m UK drivers, take 500k with a non fault claim and 500k without the ones with a non fault claim will have more subsequent non fault claims than those without.
All your other points seem to suggest insurers should price in the risk after the event has happened. If you do that you'd be out of business very quickly as you can't rely on customers renewing each year, so in your example the insurer would pay out (having not priced in the risk) and then when they tried to the next year and you left they'd be out of pocket. Pricing of risk is what insurers do, premiums aren't regulated and if the insurer doesn't want the business they'll quote you £10k.
If your premium drops after a non fault accident it's because another rating factor has changed to offset it - gone from 19 to 20 years old, moved from Moss Side to Swanage, gone from zero to one year NCB or similar. Alternatively you've changed insurer so the comparison isn't really valid.
Insurance isn't a racket, and is mandatory for a reason - if you have an accident you can't afford to pay £millions of medical bills when someone ends up permanently disabled as a result. If you don't like it then move to a country where it isn't required.
What we don't buy is how that turns into actual real losses for the insurer that would justify the increase in premium. So let's argue that having a non-fault claim makes me 10% more likely to have another non-fault claim. And that 10% of those are hit and run. So overall that is 1% more likely that my insurer is going to incur a cost. Yet somehow a 50% loading to my premium is justified...
TwigtheWonderkid said:
This is the key to it. It's not fair, but insurance isn't meant to be fair. Indeed, it absolutely shouldn't be fair.
Someone with cancer should have to pay more for life insurance or travel insurance than someone without cancer. Young people should pay more for car insurance than older people, and older people should have to pay more for life insurance than younger people.
It should be a reflection of future risk and the likelihood of claiming, and nothing to do with fairness.
Well fair....maybe not. But there are limits that we as a society should accept. I'm sure that you could run a statistic that showed people called Dave are slightly more likely then people called Jim to make a claim but it wouldn't be acceptable to load a premium based on someone's name.Someone with cancer should have to pay more for life insurance or travel insurance than someone without cancer. Young people should pay more for car insurance than older people, and older people should have to pay more for life insurance than younger people.
It should be a reflection of future risk and the likelihood of claiming, and nothing to do with fairness.
Extending your life insurance analogy to non-fault claims would mean that every time I sneezed my life premium would go up.
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