Uninsured loss

Uninsured losses are expenses not covered by your own insurance policy.

If you have third party insurance cover that means everything is an uninsured loss, as your cover is to pay for the damage you do to a third party and not your own vehicle. If you have comprehensive cover the uninsured losses will be every expense except the vehicle, subject to payment of any policy excess.

Many people think that legal cover or legal protection is insurance for these uninsured losses. That is not the case.

Legal expenses insurance may allow you to recover your uninsured losses as part of a compensation case, but it does not insure the losses themselves.

Recovery of uninsured losses with the support of legal expenses insurance usually depends on a compensation case being commercially “viable.” That means there must be a decent chance your legal costs will be paid by the person at fault, or more usually their insurance company. Our policy includes such a clause and we would like to know of one which does not. Such a clause in the policy means the insurer will insist on there being a good chance of legal costs being recovered from the other side. To recover your legal costs from the other side the case must involve an injury worth more than £1,000, or financial losses worth more than £5,000 in the absence of an injury.

This question of commercial viability is one of the very good reasons we tell you to contact us first after an accident. If someone else is to blame we can recover all losses from their insurance company. If you have repaired or replaced your vehicle through your own insurance you will have reduced the commercial viability of your case. Your own insurer will probably recover its outlay from the insurance company of the person to blame, but you will be left with your excess to pay, plus a dent in your insurance record. Call Your Key first for independent accident advice. We save you money by giving you the legal expenses insurance policy, and it will do our very best to ensure we get the right financial result in the event of an accident.

If you are sold legal expenses insurance with the promise of recovering uninsured losses you must demand to see the policy. We will happily read the small print from you as we are confident no policy will pay the costs of recovering uninsured losses without the prospect of the legal costs being paid by the other side.

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Tags: uninsured loss, uninsured losses
Posted in insurance advice |