Renewing car insurance to keep NCB, charges pending?

Plek Trum

Hello - posting this on behalf of my nephew, following on from another thread. I apologise in advance for the sensitive nature of the post and want to make it VERY clear from the onset that I do not condone drink driving In any shape or form.

In brief, he was recently stopped at a checkpoint and failed, over the limit. He has recieved results and will lose his licence for 3 years, but it will be returned to him within 2 years. We have been assured this by his solicitor and the local.Gardai also.

The case will not come to district court until May or June (delays in summons, small town ), by which point his insurance will be up.for renewal prior to the hearing / court appearance.

As far as I am aware, you loose your no claims bonus if you are not insured for 2 years. My question is should he renew his insurance for a year regardless, as normal before the court appearance, even though he won't be driving for all the year, thus extending his NCB into one year of his driving ban?

It seems too simple to hold onto his 10 years NCB but it would bring him into one year remaining on his ban. Obviously he would not be driving at all during the 2 year ban.

Please note I am not trying to be clever, defraud or condone his stupidity. I am asking for experienced advice.

He will disclose the driving ban when eligible to drive again. Would this just negate any NCB he may be able to hold onto anyway?

Advice welcome please.

Liam McPoyle

He is obliged to inform his insurer of any prosecutions, pending or other wise, at the renewal date.

Failure to disclose is a breach in policy terms and conditions and the insurer will be within their rights to cancel his policy from the renewal date.

So not only will he have a conviction on his licence he will also have a cancellation in his record that will have to be disclosed to every single insurer in the future.

The only option is to advise his insurer of the pending conviction when he receives his renewal notice.

The most likely outcome is that they will retain cover up until the date he is put off the road.

At that point the policy can be altered to exclude him from driving but keep the policy live. I'd suggest adding on a named driver at renewal (if there isn't one on it already or if he doesn't have open drive). The policy will then likely be non invited for renewal in 2018.

When he gets his licence back he will still have his full bonus however the most likely scenario is that he will have to go down the declined cases committee route in order to get his most recent insurer to provide a quote as they will not want to quote a driver with a conviction at the higher end of the scale. They will likely apply substantial premium and offer minimum cover.

He is going to be paying for this, both literally and figuratively, for many years.

Plek Trum

Rod Munch wrote: »

He is obliged to inform his insurer of any prosecutions, pending or other wise, at the renewal date.

Failure to disclose is a breach in policy terms and conditions and the insurer will be within their rights to cancel his policy from the renewal date.

So not only will he have a conviction on his licence he will also have a cancellation in his record that will have to be disclosed to every single insurer in the future.

The only option is to advise his insurer of the pending conviction when he receives his renewal notice.

The most likely outcome is that they will retain cover up until the date he is put off the road.

At that point the policy can be altered to exclude him from driving but keep the policy live. I'd suggest adding on a named driver at renewal (if there isn't one on it already or if he doesn't have open drive). The policy will then likely be non invited for renewal in 2018.

When he gets his licence back he will still have his full bonus however the most likely scenario is that he will have to go down the declined cases committee route in order to get his most recent insurer to provide a quote as they will not want to quote a driver with a conviction at the higher end of the scale. They will likely apply substantial premium and offer minimum cover.

He is going to be paying for this, both literally and figuratively, for many years.

Thank you for that - much Appreciated. His partner is insured to drive his car also as named driver / open policy as far as I know (she has her own car fulltime). Can the insurer refuse to renew cover on disclosure of a pending conviction? It nearly seems to good to be true ?

He was advised that a specialist insurer would be his only option when returning back on the road. Are they obliged to accept a valid NCB or can they disregard it and load the premium regardless? Thanks for the information and experience, I know it will be of help .

Liam McPoyle

Plek Trum wrote: »

Thank you for that - much Appreciated. His partner is insured to drive his car also as named driver / open policy as far as I know (she has her own car fulltime). Can the insurer refuse to renew cover on disclosure of a pending conviction? It nearly seems to good to be true ?

He was advised that a specialist insurer would be his only option when returning back on the road. Are they obliged to accept a valid NCB or can they disregard it and load the premium regardless? Thanks for the information and experience, I know it will be of help .

It is discretionary as far as their decision to withdraw the renewal however it is the only option he has. If people were 100% upfront with their insurer about everything then I guarantee that you wouldn't see half as many stories about people "getting screwed over by the insurance industry"

The only specialist insurer that I'm familiar with is Xcess Direct but I don't know if they are writing business in Ireland at the moment.

Last time I dealt with them (more than 4 years ago) they covered people with convictions, poor claims experience etc. They offered minimal cover with a €2000/€3000 claims excess.

galwaytt

As above, at renewal date is when you advise of pending court case - not a conviction. You're not guilty until the court deems so. Cases have been found to not proceed for all sorts of reasons in the past.........

Anyway, regarding the 2 yrs and NCB, yes, you will lose it if not renewed for 2 years. The problem may be that they may refuse to renew in any case, or cancel on foot of conviction, which is the same thing.

One thing that may be possible, for the purposes of maintain your NCB, is called suspending your policy. Ask the insurer if you can suspend your road (3rd Party element) of the policy, and maintain it otherwise in force. This is common enough practice in classic car policies where cars are put into hibernation and so don't need the road element of the cover (I do it - and get a % refund of the 'unused' road portion at renewal time), and your NCB is maintained in the interim.

Might be worth asking.

delta_bravo

This could be different by company but when I worked in one major insurer what we did was if we were advised mid term that a policyholder had been disqualified from the driving, the policy was cancelled mid term and refund issued.