Whole truth and nothing but the truth for insurance claims
When you take out a short-term insurance policy, the responsibility lies with you to provide the insurer with all the necessary information so that it can correctly underwrite (assess and price) your risk.
The information you provide at sales stage is used to enable your insurer to accurately determine whether or not to cover you, what premium to charge and whether the policy should be endorsed with special conditions. The policyholder protection rules requires the insurer to design its sales questionnaire to readily get the correct answers from you which are required to underwrite the risk. The insurer is also required to explain to you the purpose of the questions, and that a claim can be rejected if you have provided incorrect information. If incorrect information is provided unintentionally, your insurer may still pay out a claim (but isn’t obliged to).
If you misrepresent or fail to disclose material facts to the insurer, your policy may be cancelled with effect from the start date. You’d be entitled to a refund of premiums since the start date, but this is cold comfort when you’re faced with a claim.
You’re required to inform your insurer of any material change to your circumstances throughout the duration of the policy. In the case of a car, this may include a change in address, regular driver and number of claims submitted. You also have to be entirely truthful about the circumstances prompting a claim.
Most insurance policies contain a clause entitling the insurer to reject the entire claim even if just one aspect of it is found to be dishonest. Insurers do detailed investigations of claims. If a policyholder has had a policy cancelled for dishonesty, it’ll be difficult to find alternative cover. Although the burden of proving fraud is high, and lies with the insurer, the implications are serious. A fraudulent claim may not only result in a claim being rejected or a policy cancelled, it may also be reported to the police. – Ombudsman for Short-Term Insurance