Accidental home insurance

[parris]

If I have already registered a claim for accidental damage with my insurance company but then change my mind (after their surveyor's visit) and get the work done privately, does it still count towards having made a claim via my insurer too.

[Grand Union]

Parris,

It may do, but probably won't. It would be a pretty mean insurer that would hike up your premium because of a claim that they never paid out on. If you move insurers you will need to tell them that there's been an incident though. This is what's called a "material fact" and future claims could be jeorpardised but non disclosure.

[redcrx]

check with your insurer. We once had an assessor come out to the block of flats i lived in. Nothing was ever repaired and yet at the time of renewing the insurance it went up dramatically because of his vist

[gina32]

same here i phoned up for an insurance claim but didnt follow it through as it was cheaper to buy the item myself, the insurance kept phoning and writing about the claim and i kept telling them it was cancelled and then when the renewal came up the price had gone up dramatically when i phoned and asked why they said it was because we had claimed! it took loads of phones calls to make them realise we hadnt, not that it mattered much cos i then went with another insurer because of the way they had hiked the price up

[Buenchico]

I made a motor claim after my car was stolen. A couple of days later, the police found the car and I withdrew the claim. It still knocked my NCD back.

Chris

[Bazile]

I think you will find that that insurers work on the principle of the likelyhodd that they may have to pay out at some point on your policy - i.e. the risk to them in providing cover to you .

For example you may have several car accidents which are not your fault - however your bad luck in being involved in
these accidents , represents a higher risk to the insurers than some one who is lucky enough not to have had any accidents - hece your premiums will increase

[gouldc]

Bazile has hit the nail on the head.

It is part of your insurance terms and conditions that you MUST report all accidents, regardless of fault, or whether you wish to claim.

As noted, insurance is based on the likliehood of an event happening, and if you don't report a claim (even if you paid for the damages yourself), but you then inadvertently tell them, say due to having another claim, then it can cost you.

It is a strange system (car insurance now), that even if you have an accident that isn't your fault, and we recover all the money from the person at fault and allow your NCB, that your premium still goes up.

This is because some number cruncher got statistics stating that someone involved in a non-fault accident is more likely to be at fault for their next accident (can't say I've actually seen this happening myself, and I've been doing this for a while).

I suppose that with household insurance, there is a limited number of circumstances/incident that they deal with, and it probably makes more of a difference to their pricing arrangements, but don't quote me on that!