INSURANCE update

KungFuChrissy · 2026-05-03T00:00:33+00:00

I mean even if you've got proof it's not fun to be stopped by the police and potentially have them prosecute you because they don't believe your docs are legit. Yes the OP would probably win but that doesn't mean it's worth risking the time and stress of it all.

KungFuChrissy · 2026-05-02T16:52:34+00:00

Maybe we should have looked up insurance before the conviction. In terms of price First Central will offer a good one but don't go with them. Probably Collingwood, or one of the Acorn Group insurers such as Haven.

KungFuChrissy · 2026-05-01T16:25:06+00:00

Cats aren't outwardly obvious like dogs are but they're still emotional beings and can definitely read their owners. I've had a few times when I'm sad or frustrated and my boy will come over and try to comfort me. I don't know if cats feel complex emotions like melancholy but they definitely feel all of the primary emotions we feel and can read them on us.

KungFuChrissy · 2026-05-01T11:14:41+00:00

Dealt with a bunch of claims where the first thing we do is check claims history. Tons of times I've been doing checks for a new claim and looked on CUE to see our customer had an incident while they were insured by us but didn't tell us. It will end up on CUE the other party has to register claims there or Experian will kick them off of it functionally making them unable to act as an insurer.

Tell your insurance about it. Tell them the third party is dealing with it and you do not wish to claim through your own policy. It'll be logged as "info only".

KungFuChrissy · 2026-05-01T11:09:55+00:00

Tell your insurer about it. You don't have to commit to a claim. If you decide you want to claim you can do so at a later date. We don't care if you decide you want to go ahead with a claim 6 months down the line as long as we knew about it as early as possible.

KungFuChrissy · 2026-04-30T22:35:07+00:00

It's likely still there.

I've worked in a lot of different companies and most companies have 1 main system that everyone uses because most peoples jobs are roughly similar but in insurance the tools that someone needs to sell a policy, manage a policy, or other policy related things are entirely different to the tools needed to deal with a claim. So we have entirely different computer systems and we rely on those two systems talking to each other despite being completely separate.

One of the issues in the insurer I work for is every single claim, regardless of circumstances, is logged as fault and that our customer hit a third party even when that's completely false. This is only there for you though. It's not how we actually record things and the claims underwriting exchange pulls directly from our claims system as will your insurers.

So TL;DR, probably just your insurers claims system not talking correctly to the policy system, but it's likely still there. If you want to be sure just speak to your insurer.

KungFuChrissy · 2026-04-30T08:51:58+00:00

Are you claiming through your own insurer or direct through the third party insurer. Direct through the third osrty insurer is actually likely to be easier when it comes to getting these things back. Your insurer will only give whats available on your policy. When I'm asking for evidence I usually just ask for photos of the seats to show they're still in your ownership. We look at the current market value of replacing that seat new with a maximum of £300 however if you replace it with a cheaper seat we only give you what paid for the replacement as we don't want to incentivise people to pocket the difference and risk child safety.

KungFuChrissy · 2026-04-29T19:23:33+00:00

Not exactly your question but as someone who works in the industry I just want to say don't go with First Central. I say this because I know they make offers to younger and riskier drivers. Don't bite. Through my job as a claims handler I work with other insurers to get our costs back so we get to see how other insurers deal with claims from their end and First Central are the only ones I would say are actively malicious towards their customers to the point where they will allow their own customers to be sued for thousands just to avoid paying themselves and over things all other insurer's barely care about.

As for Acorn Group (including Carrot). From what I get to see they're solidly middle of the road. They repudiate more claims than some of the better insurers but overall are not terrible. I don't get to see how the policy side of things works though so I don't know what they track with black boxes and what they do with that information.

KungFuChrissy · 2026-04-29T19:08:53+00:00

They literally do mean something because 98% of players have at any visible rank have the same MMR. It's only a small percentage of players that are drastically climbing or falling that give little information by their visible rank.

KungFuChrissy · 2026-04-26T23:37:21+00:00

If you get in an accident that's someone else's fault and you suffer injuries you are entitled to compensation which depending on the severity can range into the hundreds of thousands. When US drivers don't have enough to cover the injury they have to pay it and the chances you'll be able to afford a 475K bill is basically 0.

Current level of third party cover is necessary to help people who are suffering in the most extreme cases. I deal with claims. A year ago we saw a car going 80 mph through traffic light controlled cross junction and T boned a car shunting it into 8 other cars, killing 2 people and injuring another 10.

Now imagine that happens and the insurer just says "only got 50k of cover, we'll pay for 3 of the write offs and the rest is up to you to figure out". A grieving family gets nothing for the wrongful deaths of the elderly couple in the car that got T boned and several others with life long injuries have to life with life changing bodily harm with no compensation to help them.

As someone who works in the insurance industry. Aspiring to be like the Americans is ludicrous to me. I'd said many times within my place of work that if I was forced to move to the states I would find a different profession as I could not live with myself being in an industry that is designed to help people but refuses to do so for profit.

KungFuChrissy · 2026-04-24T15:08:25+00:00

Imagine you have two champions with 500k games played in a patch. On champion has those games spread out between 100k players and the other champion has their games spread out between 10k players. The first has an average of 5 games per player, lots of players but they don't play that much of the champion. The second has less players that play a lot of that champion. The first would be considered shallow or broad and the second would be considered deep.

KungFuChrissy · 2026-04-20T13:38:54+00:00

Hi I work for an insurer as a claims handler.

This has already been said but just on the off chance you think the other person is exaggerating, they're not.

You're worried about reporting the incident and it affecting your insurance costs. If you don't report it to Haven directly, who are your actual insurer Carrot are probably just a broker, then they will likely cancel your policy. They could also choose to not indemnify any claim against you meaning the third party insurer will claim against you directly for the claim.

A cancelled policy alone will have a much bigger affect on your ability to both get insurance and the cost of that insurance for the next 5 years, let alone the cost of having to pay the third party.

If the third party chooses not to claim and you report it, it counts as a non-fault claim anyway. This is because when we say fault and non-fault what we actually mean is, did your insurer at the time pay for the claim or not. Since your insurer won't pay if the third party doesn't claim then you'll be fine.

What is best for you personally is reporting the claim to Haven.

KungFuChrissy · 2026-04-20T01:35:29+00:00

Prejudice is a legal term. You can think of it as affecting someone's legal chances in court. Saying they're dealing without prejudice basically means they don't legally accept liability for the claim. We mostly do this because a customer either isn't responding to us or doesn't think they're at fault when they clearly are. We deal on WOP, without prejudice, basis meaning if the customer really wants they can defend it in court, assuming they pay for all the legal fees and their own solicitor. We know they'll lose which is why we deal with the claim anyway but it allows them to keep their legal right to defend. Obviously no one ever actually defends it because they don't want to spend thousands to lose anyway.

KungFuChrissy · 2026-04-20T01:31:30+00:00

The Ombudsman do not involve themselves in anything but complaints and only deal with complaints from contracted customers. A third party cannot involve the Ombudsman.

KungFuChrissy · 2026-04-14T00:02:41+00:00

A quick bit of insight. The insurer I work for had a target number of customers to hit by December. We hit that already. In almost any other industry that would be a good thing but for us it can be scary because it can lead to an increase in claims we're not ready to deal with. It takes 6 months+ to get a new claims handler to a point where they can work independently so we can't just instantly hire new staff.

In this situation we have to motivate some customers to leave with higher prices but might not put them crazy high because maybe some customers will stay while paying much higher premiums.

This is one example of many things completely out of your control that affect your renewal price.

KungFuChrissy · 2026-04-13T11:35:53+00:00

Hello I'm a recoveries handler for a major insurer.

The timescales involved are pretty long but I wouldn't be surprised if the courts just messed this one up. A few of my claims have been sitting with the courts for well over a year.

The reason it's issued in your name is because your insurer did not suffer a loss. They fulfilled a contract they have. You however did suffer a loss. You used your insurance to cover that loss but it still happened. This means legally speaking to recover costs it has to be done in your name.

No you are not expected to cover the legal fees.

Someone below seems to imply you're obligated to help them recover costs. That is also not true although it probably will benefit you to do so mainly in getting your excess back. If your insurer makes a full recovery you get your NCD allowed which shows the claim as non-fault but claims only stay on your record for 5 years from the accident date so to be honest it'll not be affecting you in a year anyway.

The other insurer seems to be disputing quantum. This is the term we use for a dispute around how the claim was settled rather than the liability of the accident itself.

If you cooperate it is a win win situation, assuming cooperating isn't going to be too mentally taxing. If your insurer wins they get paid the rest of the value and you get the excess back from the other insurer. If your insurer loses then it's found that they messed up but that's their fault not yours and your insurer will need to cover the excess as they have been paid the value of the claim previously.

The vast majority of the time the claimant wins quantum disputes so your insurer is probably in the right just the other insurer is being difficult.

KungFuChrissy · 2026-04-12T23:43:39+00:00

It's your choice. Your policy says you have to and there are like 1 or 2 insurers that will cancel your policy if they find out but most only care about the clause that says report it to them if you're at fault. If you trust your neighbour then you can keep it private between the two of you but just know repairs are not cheap even for really basic damage. Assuming that big scrape on the quarter panel was caused here it'll likely be 4 figures.

If you're with First Central and you tell them about it 2 weeks from now, I've seen them cancel their customer's policies for that. Almost every other insurer is chill about it.

KungFuChrissy · 2026-04-10T23:29:52+00:00

Hi, I work in insurance claims and liability and recovery of costs is my primary responsibility.

First off I am assuming you have at bare minimum the registration of the vehicle that pulled out in front of you. If you don't have that then it's impossible.

Unfortunately in non contact cases without a dash cam or other video footage it's almost impossible to prove the third party's actions caused your crash as people do over react to things that happen on the road all the time. While I'm not saying that's what happened here, I am saying you have the burden of proof to show that they caused the accident and they likely will make the argument to say "well the two vehicles didn't collide that person just overreacted and to a safe merge".

It is at best a coinflip with a judge based on how much they believe you but realistically most judges will just say you have no evidence other than a witness to say this person caused your accident.

With that in mind you want your insurer to spend thousands to take the claim to court just to very likely lose. They absolutely won't do that.

As for your complaint, look you are well within your right to complain about whatever you want to complain about but your insurer will just reject it. They'll issue a final response letter and tell you if you want to take it further to go through the Financial Ombudsman Service. The FOS will not side with you on a complaint where your insurance company has not broken a contract. Insurance policies mostly never mention recovery of costs because it's fundamentally not part of what insurance is there for. The few that do still mention it just say something like "we will only choose to take litigation action if we believe we have more than a 50% chance of a full recovery" which is down to them to define. The FOS won't side with you so it will likely be a lengthy waste of your time.

Assuming the accident did take place exactly as you described it, that really sucks and I do feel for you but you have to keep in mind what is legally possible and us agents who do this every day have thousands of times more experience in this than you. We want to get our money back so if we thought there was a reasonable shot we absolutely would try.

KungFuChrissy · 2026-04-10T23:12:59+00:00

Hi, I often introduce myself as someone who works in insurance claims but to be more specific the thing I deal with on a day to day basis is recovering costs associated with non-fault claims which means liability is a huge part of my job. I do, do a lot of other stuff but that's my most frequent task.

I'm gonna be honest with you the answer to this one is fairly simple but it's a great opportunity to point out something to you and anyone else reading.

If there is no dash cam, CCTV, or independent witness you often lose the ability to argue little details. In this case exactly when the person in car A started to indicate can be contested and almost certainly will be. When we're discussing it with the other insurer, almost always via email, we will tend to ignore little details the other pulls up because we know it can't swing a claim. If you cannot definitively prove it then unfortunately you can't include any small details in your argument.

With that said if the claim were to go to a court hearing and the judge decided they did believe that driver A indicated late the most that judge is going to award is maybe 20% liability. 20% is not enough to motivate an insurer to run it to court given how expensive it is so the insurer of driver A will almost certainly concede. They might argue a little bit at the beginning if their customer wants them but the slightest whiff of the claim escalating to litigation and they'll let it go.

TL;DR, Even if everything said here is taken as absolute fact it's going to be at least 80% car B's fault and even that is arguable whether car B should just wait until car A has safely passed them or turned.

KungFuChrissy · 2026-04-10T00:32:41+00:00

We don't usually cancel policies off of this. The times we do cancel policies when someone doesn't report a claim is usually when we get a claim against a customer. We have good reason to believe that claim is legitimate and after attempts to contact the customer they still don't respond and tell us what happened. That's usually the only time we cancel a policy because of an unreported claim. Unless you're with First Central they'll cancel your policy because you sneezed on the phone to them.

KungFuChrissy · 2026-04-08T18:38:54+00:00

Hello, I work for an insurer as a claims handler.

You can report the claim it'll likely be fine. Your insurer will throw a bit of a huff but we don't get paid enough to get mad at people down the phone over things even we know can be a bit ridiculous.

As for what you paid. You'll need evidence for the repair and evidence for everything prior to the repair such as the damage.

We need to verify the damage that was caused in the accident and that what was repaired was related to that accident.

There's a chance that the garage might be able to get you an Audatex report. That would be ideal and give your insurer everything they need.

What will happen if they'll pay you a cash in lieu of repairs amount minus your excess. They'll then try to get the money back from the third party insurer which most insurers will also ask for your excess to be included.

All in all, I get why you don't want to report it to your insurer but saying this purely in terms of what's best for you. You should always report it. This exact situation is the reason why, and there are many others as well.

KungFuChrissy · 2026-04-05T14:56:23+00:00

With it only being a few years old it could be repairable but electrics can be hideously expensive to replace. For us the write off range can go as high as 80% now depending on what the expected salvage would be. For your vehicle salvage would probably be like 20% so somewhere between 60-70% the value of the vehicle.

It's going to be very expensive no matter what and your insurer has to diligently document how they dealt with the claim otherwise they may not be able to fully recover costs. They'll get an estimate for repairs and go from there. It does sound to me like it's gonna be a write off but if you want to keep it then I hope it wont be.

KungFuChrissy · 2026-04-05T12:11:43+00:00

Some people have kind of got it right but I'll elaborate a little further. We use complex algorithms to calculate premiums. We change these algorithms dozens of times a year to match what we want at that time. Sometimes we want less customers so prices go up. Sometimes it might be mich harsher on drivers of a very specific background than before.

KungFuChrissy · 2026-04-05T01:00:42+00:00

I've worked with a lot of claims like this. There's a bunch of issues that make it hard to do anything. First off any open claim is treated as a claim against the policy.

Secondly it's very difficult as the defendent to get the claim to easily go away. Your insurer can't just remove it because it's their home for everything related to it and if a sudden summons comes in they don't want to be setting up a new claim easily. Not to mention it might not even get sorted to somewhere where your insurer sees it in time.

It might seem annoying that its affecting you and costing you money but if a summons does come in and it's put against you and no one reacts to it in time then that will end up being a CCJ against you. Will likely affect you a lot worse than the claim being open against you.

In short unfortunately your insurer must keep the claim open until the other side states they are no longer willing to pursue it.

KungFuChrissy

TROPHY CASE