History of Motor Insurance

Honest John Back Room » Motoring discussion
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Fri 5 Jan 2007 16:49
History of Motor Insurance - johnny
Just curious - who invented Motor Insurance and when did it become a legal requirement.
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Sat 6 Jan 2007 12:11
History of Motor Insurance - maclean
Hi - it became a legal requirement in UK in1930 but the first motor policies were issued just after 1900.And no I did not work the company that issued them although I did first work in insurance quite some years ago!

Car & General and Motor Union were 2 of the very early companies
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Sat 6 Jan 2007 13:28
History of Motor Insurance - mike hannon
I think it must have come shortly after the invention of small print.
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Sat 6 Jan 2007 13:52
History of Motor Insurance - colynn
I don't know how old car insurance is, but when I did my Insurance exams 25 years ago, I remember that if you did not want to have Insurance, you could deposit a sum with HMG instead. I seem to think it was about £20000, a lot of money in 1970's

Does anyone know, Is this option still available, and how much is it today.

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Sat 6 Jan 2007 14:55
History of Motor Insurance - DavidHM
Theoretically, it's avaiable if you have a spare half-million:

tinyurl.com/y5x96v

Of course the interest on £500k would easily be £15,000 per year (net of tax at 40% if necessary) and so the option would probably only make sense for 17-year-old footballers insuring Bentleys.

It used to be £15,000 under the original, unupdated text of the legislation, at which point it could actually make sense for quite a lot of young drivers.
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Sat 6 Jan 2007 16:08
History of Motor Insurance - CGNorwich
"It used to be £15,000 under the original, unupdated text of the legislation, at which point it could actually make sense for quite a lot of young drivers."


Well not really - You would still be personally liable for payment of any damages awarded against you as a result of your negligence and those damagese could easily exceed even the current requirement of a £500,000 deposit.
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Sun 7 Jan 2007 18:57
History of Motor Insurance - maclean
Many large fleets of lorries vans and rental cars operate on a virtually self insured basis.The only insurance they take out is TP only with an excess of up to £1000000 each and every claim.Effectively they are paying all of the very catostrophic claims out of their own revenue streams with the insurance company dealing with the seriously expensive ones.Local and government authorities also work on similar lines.
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Sun 7 Jan 2007 23:42
History of Motor Insurance - Robin Reliant
Insurance a legal requirement now? Blimey, what will this greedy government think of next. I suppose they'll soon want to make it compulsory for everyone to have one of those disc thingys you see on cars in posh areas.

Flaming liberty.
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