Third Party Claims - Credit
Hire
If you are in need of a hire vehicle owing to
an accident that was someone elses fault - click here for
details of credit hire
There are gaps in the policy cover you can buy
and the losses you might sustain in an accident. Those losses
not covered are called 'uninsured losses' because they are not
insured. A few years ago, one of these gaps in cover was
plugged by the hire car business.
If you go back to the 1980's or earlier, and
you wanted to hire a car and recover the cost from a negligent
driver's insurer, you had to pay for it up front, obtain a
receipt and then spend weeks, if not months waiting to get your
money back.
Now you can go to a credit hire firm and obtain
a car on credit. They will supply the car hire to you on credit
and pursue recovery, not only of the cost of the hire, but also
your other uninsured losses as well from the negligent third
party and their insurers.
Sounds simple, but the insurance industry was
not happy.Why? Because the cost of the credit hire was
significantly higher than the cost of a normal car hire rates.
So there were many legal disputes' between the new credit hire
industry and the insurance industry with thousands of court
cases clogging up the system. Indeed, many credit hire firms
found themselves with cashflow difficulties and went bust or
were taken over.
During 2001, following a landmark hearing in
the House of Lords, insurers and credit hire firms have largely
resolved their differences. I have little sympathy for the
insurance industry, this has arisen through their own fault.
Instead of listening to the needs of their customers, they have
their heads buried in litigation. Even now, it is seen as a
claims problem. WRONG!
If senior managers and underwriters of all the
major insurers redesigned the concept of a comprehensive
policy, and provided the cover and services now demanded by the
insurance market, they could have avoided all this difficulty
and expense in the first place.
"I was thrown from my car as it left the road. I
was later found in a ditch by
some stray cows. " |
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Extracts taken from actual claim
forms submitted to
a number of UK car insurance companies |
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Car Insurance Third Party Claims - Medical Expenses
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