Writing this on behalf of a friend who doesn’t have Internet access at the moment.
He owns a French-registered RHD car, and last year he changed his insurers to Direct Assurance. As far as he was aware all was in order.
Following my recent discovery that Direct Assurance don’t insured RHD vehicles, he began looking for a new insurer. That 's when he found that Direct Assurance had actually cancelled his cover last year!
He works overseas and it seems that he didn’t notice an email from Direct Assurance to which he should have replied.
So while we have all been driving the car for months in blissful ignorance it was uninsured.
He has been to an insurance company to have the vehicle correctly insured, and they are saying it is not possible since it has been uninsured for so long. End of. No solution offered. Just a ‘No, not possible to insure this vehicle.’
Does anybody have any advice please?
He is domiciled in France and has had his only home here for 20 years. He has a CdS and his taxation situation is all in order, just in case anybody asks.
Yes, he knows that. He is in an extremely high-pressure job, it’s easy to miss things. He already had the insurance green ticket from Direct Assurance so had assumed the insurance was running.
Could he perhaps do a change of ownership? This would reset the insurance. You say “we have all been driving the car”, so if it is a “shared” vehicle, doing a transfer of ownership to one of the other people who uses it may be an option?
It is because of the way French insurance law works. Continuous insurance is required and there should be no period when any car that is on the road is uninsured. If there is then the next insurer that provides insurance on that car on automatically becomes liable for anything that crawls out of the woodwork during that period when it was not insured. That’s why they’re not keen. Most insurers have a blanket policy of not accepting vehicles whose insurance had lapsed prior to applying to them for cover.
But when you apply to insure a vehicle you have just acquired, then as long you ask for the policy to start on the day you become the legal owner they do not look any futher back than that.
If I recall a previous situation correctly… a friend’s insurance company wanted to see the new policy (with another company) before they would agree to stop/cancel the existing policy. Perhaps that is not normal, usual… but it would make good sense as cars are meant to be insured… always… at one level or another.
So I think Direct has behaved badly… and why send the Green Card if cancelling the contract… very very odd
That’s surprising. My daughter owned a car for around six years after she passed her test and while she was at university, then there was a gap of around four years when she did not have a car because she lived in Paris, and she was not named on our insurance. When she bought another car, the insurance company she approached simply requested her driving record from the previous insurers and allowed her full bonus malus.
oh yes, the discount may be “recollected” but very few insurers will do that in France and those who will usually still apply a premium based on a “no discount” history (although you will keep your previous NCD and 3 years from now if you want to change your policy it will look as if there is no insurance gap).
Surely if there’s a gap there is a procedure for declaring it “off-road”? I could well imagine circumstances when I would be leaving the car on my own private property unused, for a number of months.
I bought my first car in France 11 years ago, the insurance company (if I remember correctly) asked for previous car insurance details. As hadn’t had a car since 1987 I couldn’t provide them.
A covering letter from my Transport manager attesting that I drive a company car from the pool and no claims against me, got me the full bonus malus…
Maybe things have changed since.
Even if the car is off the road it still has to be insured. That’s what continuous insurance means. Often if the insurers are satisfied that car is immobilised and can’t be driven they will drop the insurance right down to a bare minimum so that you are paying a very low premium. But as long as the car remains registered in your name, it has to be insured.
Could you please let me have some contact details that I can pass to my friend? I can’t guarantee he’ll get in touch, but I’ll be very happy to put him in touch with you.
