Insurance company ceiling on NCB

[falling-out-with-my-car]

Hello,

As some of you may already be aware I recently bought a very nice 07 Citroen C5 Exclusive
and I have been having some issues with Insurance companies, which I have learnt a few others have had similar problems.

I have been battling with my old insurance company via emails because they set a ceiling of 9 years NCB on all their policies
regardless of whether you joined them with more than 9 years NCB.

when your policy ends your NCB statement is reduced to 9 years and I recently found out that an extra 2 years NCB can save as much as £200
on your next insurance quote.

The insurance companies must know this and impose a ceiling of 9 years deliberately to keep the cost of their insurance products high.

Other insurance companies impose a ceiling of as much as 20 years NCB which to my mind is a lot fairer to the customer.

I have had excuses that the companies cannot talk to each other because of the data protection act and an apology

with an offer of £50 compensation for incorrect information given out on the telephone when I called my Insurers.

I have refused this compensation as I view my NCB loss of 2 years to be worth a lot more than a measly 50 quid.

I have had to make some fairly serious threats to take the whole matter to the Insurance ombudsman to ask that a ceiling

of 20 years becomes an industry standard right across the board.

and even though it may look promising that I have almost reached a conclusion except for the fact that one company is now
making excuses that they can email me the correct NCB amount of 11 years instead of 9 years but it may be tampered with or used
unlawfully if it is sent via email.

They are being about as difficult as they can be.

However even if my case is resolved I am very interested in finding out if others have had the same or similar experience with insurance companies
and if we should all club together with a pile of letters to the Insurance ombudsman and see if we cannot increase the NCB ceiling to at least 20 years worth... I would be very happy to collate all the letters/emails and send them off to the ombudsman.

Sorry to have to ask but can you please keep it to the subject matter and not go to far off topic as it makes it harder to back track for specific information if we do decide to
try to change the insurance industry ceiling so that it becomes a more level playing field for everyone by writing to the ombudsman.

Thanks for reading this and I hope you are interested in making a real difference for all our futures and ultimately the overall cost of our insurance premiums.

regards.

Nigel.

[mickeymoon]

I don't think NCB by years is fair at all.

My mum, for example, has full no claims. She travels around 2000 miles per year since she retired, I can't see how that's fair to compare it with someone like me, who gets the same NCB, but has driven 6000 miles since the beginning of September.

NCB should be calculated on miles driven with no claims, not years. I've a friend who's got a fully insured car racking up no claims that never goes anywhere.. it simply sits in the garage!



Sent from my SM-G925F using Tapatalk

[falling-out-with-my-car]

I understand your point but we buy vehicle insurance annually so it runs for 12 months only and we often jump ship/shop around go to another company
through our own choice internet searching phone calls etc., when we leave one company we tend to expect them to honour the NCB and not reduce it
because they have a set ceiling limit. you can advise on your quote form online that you only do a set number of miles a year and as a result get slightly cheaper insurance.
I only every insure my little 2cv for 3K a year it keeps the cost of insuring it down. you could make the same argument about road tax.

[bobins]

Nigel, you may be interested in the following I received from Admiral earlier this year. Long story short - they completely screwed up my insurance claim and behaved badly all the way through. Everything got resolved in the end though. This is a small part of what they've sent me over the last year and is relevant to your concerns about NCB.


"We have reviewed the information we added to the CUE Database and wish to outline an error we found. You’ll be aware the above incident did not affect your No Claims Bonus. Our internal records also confirm this. However, due to a system error, the information added to the CUE Database contradicted this. We’ve now corrected this and fixed the error to make sure it doesn’t happen again.

Please be assured this error hasn’t affected your policy with us and your most recent Proof of Bonus was correct. This email is for your information only.


What is the CUE Database?

The Claims Underwriting Exchange Database (CUE) is a central database where most of the insurance market shares details of claims and incidents reported to them. Its main purpose is to help identify fraud and/or misrepresentation. This is explained in our Privacy Statement included in the Terms and Conditions of the policy. Insurers can check this database and may ask you questions about any differences they find between the database and the information you provide. This is usually when providing a quote for a new policy.

What does this mean to me?

As you’ve left us, it’s possible an insurer asked you about this incident. You may have been asked about differences between the information you gave and CUE’s records. CUE should only be used by insurance companies to verify your information and should not be used in isolation for calculating your premium. If this happened and you gave the information they asked for, this error should not have had any impact on the premium you were quoted.

If you provided your Proof of Bonus to your insurer, this would have shown the correct information.

What should I do now?

You don’t need to do anything as the error has been corrected and we don’t think it would have a negative impact on your new policy, for the reasons given above.

We have a commitment to ensuring your data is processed accurately, so please accept our apologies for this error. I hope we’ve been able to explain the situation clearly and you are assured we’ve taken the matter seriously. "