Car insurance - UK resident, UK-registry car, EEA licence (with Shadow licence in DVLA) - no-claim protection

Question

I'm an UK resident with EU driving license. I own a UK-registered car and I do pay a bit too much for insurance. It is because I stated that I had an accident and a claim in UK in 2016. Also, since then I'm in DVLA with "shadow" UK driving licence. However, it was while I was driving foreign-registered car with foreign insurance. I had a claim protection on that insurance.

My question is: can I state i had no claims on my insurance when asked by UK company? I obviously have to report the traffic violation that the accident followed, but how about claims? UK insurers do not accept a no-claim years on foreign insurance, so by the same token they should not require from me to even disclose the fact that claim was paid from my foreign insurance, right?

The difference is over £1000, so even if I cancel my current insurance I'm still a huge amount ahead. But it depends on an answer to my question. Additionally - would the terms of my current insurance (where I disclosed a claim) be shared with other insurers if I look for another insurance elsewhere, without the claim paid statement (assuming I can do it)?

Answer 1

As far as I know, insurers want to know if you have been involved in any kind of claim. It doesn't matter if it was a claim on a policy issued by a UK insurer or a foreign insurer.

If you obtain insurance by withholding this information, your insurance will likely not be valid. This may have undesirable legal consequences for you if there is an accident and a court decides that you obtained the insurance fraudulently and were effectively driving without insurance.

My impression is that there are many questions that insurers only check retrospectively in the event of a claim. For example, my insurers ask me how many miles I drive each year. I suspect that, in the event of an accident, they would check this. If I said 6000 miles and their claims investigator found I had actually driven 15000 miles, I would expect them to say I was uninsured. It is possible that when, and how deeply they look at your insurance history may follow a similar pattern.