just been reading a link that someone posted on here the other week
heres the link
www.homeapproved.co.uk/comprehensive-car-insurance...m
it specifically says any car worth over £5000 has to be insured as fully comp by law
first ive heard of this
none of mine are, if i bend em im gonna mend em,am i an illegal then?
is this right, or a ripping yarn?
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Could possibly explain the behaviour of some online quote systems I've used in the past...
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The Road Traffic Act says absolutely nothing about the value of the car insured, funnily enough.
Although anyone who owns a car worth more than £5,000 but doesn't insure it comprehensively might have trouble under the Mental Health Act (unless they're seriously wealthy) there's no compulsion to insure any car for anything other than third party liability (defined to include certain situations).
That said, actually getting an insurer to quote TPO on a car worth more than £5k is probably a challenge (and probably more expensive than fully comp for good masure).
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TPO is being marginalized by Insurance Companies.
Specifically by reply to the OP I don't believe this website's assertion.
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...is this right, or a ripping yarn?
i agree with david-hm.
bell boy: the insurance company itself says:
www.insurancewide.com/legal/terms_and_conditions.h...l
.... Information on our website
We provide insurance information of a general nature on our site but this isn't intended as insurance, legal, tax, accounting, consulting or other advice. In particular we don't advise on the merits of buying or not buying any particular insurance or other products or services. While we do our best to ensure that general information on our site is accurate and up to date, we can't promise this and so it's at your risk if you rely on it when deciding whether or not to buy any, or any particular type, of insurance or for any other reason. ....
so there.
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I wonder if, although the RTA is silent on the point, there may be an agreement between insurers not to offer TP policies on cars worth more than £5,000, perhaps through the vehicle of the ABI.
(Although I can't imagine how any private arrangement on those lines could be seen as anything other than anti-competitive by a regulator, however small the actual market would be).
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Yes David you are probably right, still doesn't make it law unless this mob have PFId legislating as well :-)
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I dunno...
First the government could say you can only be an insurer if you're covered by the ABI (whether by statute or statutory instrument). I'm sure there's some legislation to this effect somewhere.
Then the ABI agreement could impsoe conditions via what are essentially delegated powers, possibly on the basis that they want to avoid large claims without merit - if you lose a £5k car you may want to issue proceedings (i.e., above the Small Claims threshold with all the costs implications) because there's no prospect of recovering your loss otherwise.
So suddenly people find themselves unable to do what they might otherwise wish to - i.e., write or purchase third party policies for valuable cars. Obviously anyone doing this (for instance mistakenly declaring a value of £4,800 for a car worth £5,200) wouldn't be committing a crime but by a convoluted process, there could be a legal restriction on people entering into a particular contract, even though it's neither directly prohibited nor has the government sought to prohibit it.
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is this right or a ripping yarn?
It's rubbish.
The government doesn't care whether you lose your own money, they only care that you are insured in respect of other people:
"Before taking a vehicle on the road
The vehicle must:
be registered with the Driver and Vehicle Licensing Agency (DVLA)
have a valid vehicle tax disc
hold a current test certificate (if this is required)
You must:
have the minimum of third party insurance which covers your use of the vehicle"
Why would the government care that your car is comprehensively insured if it's worth £6k but not £4k?
One of the online brokers offered me tpft, but most companies won't offer it for vehicles worth more than £5k, but that's a decision they take on their own, it's not a legal requirement.
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The roads are full of vehicles - brand new and are insured 3rd party only. Manyor even Most large fleets(say 250 cars or more) will "self insure" i.e. they will take 3rd party (not even theft) and take the risk.
Fleet premiums can be as much as £1500/car (Vectra Mondeo type) and 3rd party less than half that. I worked for many companies that had this policy - they also had a large claims department that chased others in accidents with their cars and claimed on them (where they could).
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Admittedly we only have a very small fleet, but have just added an 07 reg Mondeo 2.0tdci Zetec for about £600 fully comp (on a separate insurance policy for various reasons) - would have thought large fleets could get prices close to this even bearing in mind that drivers may be higher risk etc etc. Though I know you are right in that many larger fleets "self insure" so obviously things are not as simple as they seem!
Directly on the topic, I remember when I went to my first car over £5k the insurance company made me switch to comprehensive. Was quite a challenge at the time as had rather pushed the boat out for the car, and as a young driver was not easy finding another close to 1k for insurance
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As others have said it's the insurers themselves that force you into fully comp over a set value, rather than the government.
Funny enough it doesn't seem to work the same for bikes. You can get TPF&T quotes on an £8k bike quite easily.
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Click on the "Senior Citizens" sub-heading of "Drivers" and it says "Senior Car Insurance ....................... Senior car insurance is a legal requirement in the UK ..." What is that supposed to mean?
--
L\'escargot.
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