Car insurance is due to renew soon, so I'm doing the annual chore of shopping around, initially on comparison sites, but I'm not sure how best to honestly record the status of a named driver's accident.
Situation is this. I have a fully comp policy on my car, and my girlfriend is a named driver. Last year, she was involved in a minor accident that was her fault. She was driving my car at the time, but I was not in it. Therefore, the claim was made against my policy and I suffered the NCB loss.
As far as I can tell, when buying insurance, then when asked, I should be stating that:
- The policyholder (me) has made a claim in the past, but has had no accidents.
- The named driver (gf) has made no claims, but has had an accident.
This seems to me to be the most honest and factual way of reporting my driver details.
However, when it comes to renewal, most sites (using Meerkats as the example below), when asking about driver details ask a question along the lines of: "Have they had any motor accidents, claims or losses in the past 5 years, no matter who was at fault or if a claim was made?".
Wanting to be as honest as I can, I therefore filled out the details of the same claim for both of us - but of course, this doubled the price of the quotes I was getting, as I assume their system registers that as two separate claims. I tried a different comparison site and out of interest, I placed the details of the claim on the named driver only...and the quotes returned seemed much more inline with what I'd expect.
It seems to me, given the wording of the question, that the only way I can answer it honestly is to record the claim details against both drivers....or am I wrong in differentiating between the 'accident' and the 'claim', and should therefore simply state that it is only the named driver who has had a "claim", even though I was main policyholder at the time?
Obviously I don't want to risk insurance fraud, but I cant help thinking that I'm unwittingly recording what is viewed as two separate incidents. How would you go about this?
Situation is this. I have a fully comp policy on my car, and my girlfriend is a named driver. Last year, she was involved in a minor accident that was her fault. She was driving my car at the time, but I was not in it. Therefore, the claim was made against my policy and I suffered the NCB loss.
As far as I can tell, when buying insurance, then when asked, I should be stating that:
- The policyholder (me) has made a claim in the past, but has had no accidents.
- The named driver (gf) has made no claims, but has had an accident.
This seems to me to be the most honest and factual way of reporting my driver details.
However, when it comes to renewal, most sites (using Meerkats as the example below), when asking about driver details ask a question along the lines of: "Have they had any motor accidents, claims or losses in the past 5 years, no matter who was at fault or if a claim was made?".
Wanting to be as honest as I can, I therefore filled out the details of the same claim for both of us - but of course, this doubled the price of the quotes I was getting, as I assume their system registers that as two separate claims. I tried a different comparison site and out of interest, I placed the details of the claim on the named driver only...and the quotes returned seemed much more inline with what I'd expect.
It seems to me, given the wording of the question, that the only way I can answer it honestly is to record the claim details against both drivers....or am I wrong in differentiating between the 'accident' and the 'claim', and should therefore simply state that it is only the named driver who has had a "claim", even though I was main policyholder at the time?
Obviously I don't want to risk insurance fraud, but I cant help thinking that I'm unwittingly recording what is viewed as two separate incidents. How would you go about this?
