Do car insurance need to tell you when claim is made against you?

[jimyu]

Sorry for the boring thread, but I think someone may know the answer...

Last year my wife rolled into the back of another car...we're talking a 1 or 2 mph impact in traffic to a roundabout. They pulled over, agreed there was no damage, exchanged details and all seemed good.

The next day the guy messages saying he has noticed damage and want to make a claim... he forwards loads of pictures of pre existing damaging all over the rear bumper, damages that could never have been caused by the impact (including a puncture hole all the way through the bumber). My wife replies saying he will be committing fraud etc and that we can prove she didn't cause the damage. We never heard from him again.

My wife called the insurance co to explain what happened and that he may try to make a fraudulent claim but we can get video footage to disprove it with cctv footage (the incident was on the exit road from her works HQ - the driver was apparently a chauffeur).

We never heard anything and now the insurance renewal docs include a £4k claim against us for a new bumper!

Surely they should have notified us? I'm hoping we have some grounds to do something about this. She was driving my car at the time so it has effected insurance for both our cars and also my motorbike. Premiums are about £1k more in total as a result!

[JonRA]

I'm not sure whether they are obliged to tell you but it would seem helpful to do so before they finally settle.

As for what you can do, I would gather your evidence together (including the date/time of your wife's phone call to them) and get in touch to remind them that there was minimal/if any damage and in your opinion, the claim must be covering previous damage - in which case why they have settled? If you can convince them that the claim clearly was fraudulent, hopefully they will be able to have the claim reassessed (though I am no expert). From previous threads, it seems insurance companies often want to take the line of least resistance and get things sorted ASAP.

As for your premiums going up, they usually do after an incident, regardless who was at fault (which in this case was your wife). But maybe the increase would reduce if it is shown that the damage was minimal at most?