If you’ve made several claims on your car insurance in the past, you might want to consider how your claims history might affect your future car cover premiums. Take a look at our guide to compare car insurance providers and find out how you can still save money on your car insurance even after making previous claims.
Several factors can affect the cost of your car insurance. These include your age, driving experience and history, where you live, your car’s make and model, security and what you use your car for. Another factor to affect the price of your car cover is your claims history.
Making a claim on car insurance will almost certainly affect the price of your premiums and means it increases. A no claims discount might also be partly or completely lost when a claim is made, pushing the premium up even higher.
While no two claims are the same, insurers tend to separate claims into two categories to assess who is responsible. These are “at-fault” claims and “non-fault” claims.
At-fault claims occur when the driver’s insurer has to pay out for a claim and can’t recover any costs from a third party due to the policyholder being deemed at fault.
Non-fault claims claims occur when a third-party insurer makes the payments towards any damage because the third-party driver is at fault.
How long a previous claim will affect a car insurance premium really depends on the insurance provider. When you obtain a car insurance quote, you’ll be asked about your claims history that usually covers a period of around three to five years. Any claim made within this time period is likely to affect your premium but as time passes between your last claim, those older claims should start to have less of an effect on your premium.
At-fault claims or claims you’re responsible for are likely to push premiums up higher than non-fault claims. This is mainly due to insurers believing that at-fault drivers are more likely to need to claim again, which increases their risk profile.
The amount your car insurance premium increases will depend on the nature of the claim, how much your insurer has to pay out to cover the claim and your current level of risk.
Unfortunately, making a claim on your car insurance is likely to affect your no claims discount, unless you chose to enhance your cover with no claims discount protection when you first took out car cover with the insurer.
Many insurers have an uninsured driver promise included in the cover benefits, which means if you’re involved in a crash with an at-fault uninsured driver, your no claims bonus might still be protected.
It’s worth remembering that even if you manage to keep hold of some or all of your no claims discount after a claim, your overall premium could still increase. This is because an insurer may view you as more of a risk on the roads or more likely to make a claim again.
The guidelines will vary between insurers so be sure to understand whether you can make any claims without affecting your no claims discount.
You have a couple of options for checking your car insurance claims history. The easiest option is to request your claims history directly from your current car insurance provider. Your provider should be able to provide you with key information relating to any claims such as the dates of claims, the types of claims, the settlement amounts or payouts and any injuries claimed as well as any other details. If, for some reason, your insurance provider is unable to provide you with any details relating to your claims history, you have an alternative option.
You can check the Claims and Underwriting Exchange (CUE) database, which is a register of all claims made in the UK relating to home, personal injury, travel and motor insurance. It was set up in 1994 to help insurers keep track of claims and to minimise insurance fraud as all incidents are recorded whether they result in a claim or not.
As well as insurance providers being able to access information from this database, you’re also able to look at your own claims history. You can obtain your report online or speak to a representative for further details.
| Response | Yorkshire and the Humber | West Midlands | Wales | South West | South East | Scotland | Northern Ireland | North West | North East | Greater London | East of England | East Midlands |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| £25-49 | 20% | 13.91% | 25.76% | 21.74% | 15.23% | 17.11% | 16.67% | 12.4% | 26.19% | 12.96% | 19.54% | 15.91% |
| Not sure | 14.12% | 6.96% | 9.09% | 8.7% | 8.61% | 11.84% | 12.5% | 9.09% | 9.52% | 12.04% | 9.2% | 13.64% |
| £1-£24 | 14.12% | 2.61% | 15.15% | 5.8% | 14.57% | 11.84% | 8.33% | 4.96% | 4.76% | 6.48% | 16.09% | 7.95% |
| £100-£199 | 9.41% | 21.74% | 12.12% | 10.14% | 10.6% | 13.16% | 12.5% | 22.31% | 7.14% | 16.67% | 17.24% | 14.77% |
| £50-99 | 9.41% | 25.22% | 15.15% | 20.29% | 17.22% | 17.11% | 16.67% | 19.83% | 9.52% | 20.37% | 17.24% | 19.32% |
| N/A there is no price hike that would stop me letting my car insurance auto-renew | 2.35% | 4.35% | 3.03% | 7.25% | 5.96% | 5.26% | 8.26% | 11.9% | 3.7% | 2.3% | 2.27% | |
| £200 or more, please specify | 2.61% | 1.45% | 0.66% | 1.32% | 0.83% | 1.15% | 1.14% |
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