Car Insurance - Making A Claim

So what do you do to make a claim once you have been unlucky, or careless, and had a claim event happen to you?

Let us suppose your car is struck by another vehicle. In the past, you used to have to go and see your insurance broker. Your broker would have given you a claim form or accident report form to fill in. You would be asked for two or more estimates for the repairs to your car. After filling in the form and running around town obtaining estimates, you went back to the broker. He would post them off to the insurance company. They would take 2 or 3 days to set up the claim on their (paper) records. They would reply to the broker, possibly requesting an inspection by their motor engineer. By the time the broker received this, it was a week passed the date of the claim event. You would need to take the car to the chosen repairer (always the cheapest) and wait a few more days before the engineer could see it and approve the work.

There has been a bit of a revolution! This is due in part to the computer and due in part to the introduction in the 1980's of 'direct' insurance. The result is that the speed of service, whether you have bought by telephone or internet, from a 'direct writer' or via a broker has improved dramatically.

Let us assume you have all the benefits of a comprehensive policy plus all the 'add on's' discussed in the the section on policy cover.

You can summons help from the scene of the accident, via a mobile phone or nearest pay phone, get your car towed to the nearest approved repairer of your insurer where authorisation for the repair is automatic. A courtesy car or hire car is provided so you can keep mobile whilst the work goes ahead. The chances are that if the repair is not too extensive you will have your car back within a few days. So your car could be repaired and back on the road in the time it took just to get an engineer out to look at it, in the past. And you have been mobile the whole time.

Having returned home, telephone your insurer. they might already know of the accident. Both the recovery service and the approved repairer are instructed to report it to them.

Some insurers will still require an accident report form and will post this to you. Others will partially fill one out on their computer screens whilst you tell them of the accident. Some insurers have done away with the need for claim forms. Instead, they record your telephone conversation. And the recording constitutes your claim form.

Reporting via the Internet is now happening but insurers are slow to adopt this new medium for claims activity. If you do need to go and visit your broker, many of them now have 'e-mail' links to their insurer, or they will pick up the telephone to report it for you. Brokers have had to improve their service to their customers to keep pace with the new 'direct' companies.

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