Will my insurance be void?

9 comments

1. You signed to say to your knowledge all info was correct, insurance companies don’t need much encouragement to challenge a claim. Depends on the company i guess but i would pay the fee and change it, if there is one, at least contact them. Unless you already crashed.

2. Why take the risk?

   Just contact then and say you made a mistake when filling the form in. They may charge an admin fee but at least it’ll be sorted

3. Your insurance will only be void if they wouldn’t have covered you in the first place had the information been correct.

   It’s not unusual for partner / spouse / family whatever to be the owner or registered keeper but not the other.

   It’s very unlikely they’ll void it, what will likely happen is they will charge you an additional premium to correct it (if there is any at all).

4. So technically your insurance is void. I don’t know how many of the people advising you have inside knowledge of the insurance industry but I used to work for a large home/car insurance in one of the technical underwriting teams, if this had come across our desks then it’s unlikely we would have paid out.

   What is the reason for the discrepancy?

5. possibly yes, you’ve mis-stated a ‘material fact’ on the policy and if the true circumstance means the insurer wouldn’t have offered you cover int he first place then they’re perfectly entitled to void your policy from inception, why would you put yourself as the registered keeper if you aren’t?

6. Ask your insurance company.

   All policies are different.

7. I used to work for an insurance company many moons ago, though not in the relevant departments, so some bits of this may not be entirely correct:

   I am painting an absolute worst-case scenario here. It’s perhaps a little hyperbolic, but it’s by no means impossible.

   The good news is that your insurer will still pay out the person you twatted into (because that’s a legal requirement).

   The bad news is that if they wouldn’t have covered you – or they decide you lied for material reasons (eg. to get a lower price) – your insurer may void your policy from inception.

   Technically speaking, this means your insurance policy never existed. They’ll likely still keep your money, however, and may sue you for the amount they’re out of pocket paying to repair whatever damage you caused.

   This can be pretty drastic. You destroyed someone’s Ferrari, no big deal – they’re out a couple of hundred thousand. But if you seriously injured a person, you may have to pay for that persons care for the rest of their life and the salary they’ve lost out on because they can no longer work. The example I always heard was “ran into a bus stop full of student doctors” (which rumour has it did actually happen).

   This can run into millions quite easily. You would undoubtedly be looking at bankruptcy.

   Oh, and you will now have to tell future insurers you’ve had a policy cancelled. This will make future insurance very expensive.

8. Yes because you have to have the correct information on the policy and those fucks will take ANYTHING as an excuse to invalidate it.

9. If, you say. If you have an accident then your policy now has to pay as if there was no such error. An insurer can come after you in court but that would be highly unlikely for such a simple error/deception.

   If you have made an error then tell the insurer or get the registered keeper changed to you, not least because such a situation is suspicious. It’s a lot less hassle than risking problems.