Just over a year ago, my wife was involved in a car accident. It was indisputably her fault - she pulled out into traffic and was hit by a van from the left which, if she'd looked for, she would have seen. She accepted responsibility, which was fair enough, and got the car fixed and that was pretty much that. Our insurance was renewed in September of last year and increased by a couple of hundred quid or thereabouts.
Fast forward to now, and we've just had our renewal for this year. The premium has fallen a fair way, but understandably it's still not as low as it was prior to the accident. However, a personal injury claim has now come out of the woodwork. My wife has had a letter from some claims company (Parabis, she said? I'm guessing it's some ambulance chasing outfit) saying that the driver is lodging some kind of personal injury claim.
Now, I don't care about the validity of the claim. I've no doubt that it's rubbish, but I've also no doubt that there is very little we can do to prove that. It strikes me as fairly irrelevant that it happened a year ago at low speed and so on - I imagine our insurance company will just roll over and take it, and I doubt there is anything anyone can do to change that.
So, my question... Is this likely to affect the premium we are about to pay for our renewal, and our future premiums? Or does the increase in the premium that has already occurred take into account this sort of thing, even though it hadn't come to light at the time of the premium going up?
Cheers.
Fast forward to now, and we've just had our renewal for this year. The premium has fallen a fair way, but understandably it's still not as low as it was prior to the accident. However, a personal injury claim has now come out of the woodwork. My wife has had a letter from some claims company (Parabis, she said? I'm guessing it's some ambulance chasing outfit) saying that the driver is lodging some kind of personal injury claim.
Now, I don't care about the validity of the claim. I've no doubt that it's rubbish, but I've also no doubt that there is very little we can do to prove that. It strikes me as fairly irrelevant that it happened a year ago at low speed and so on - I imagine our insurance company will just roll over and take it, and I doubt there is anything anyone can do to change that.
So, my question... Is this likely to affect the premium we are about to pay for our renewal, and our future premiums? Or does the increase in the premium that has already occurred take into account this sort of thing, even though it hadn't come to light at the time of the premium going up?
Cheers.
