Are We Obliged To Tell Insurer That The Car Has Been A Cat S Total Loss?

You'll need to tell the insurer, even if they don't specifically ask. It's a material fact and disclosure is required under the principle of 'utmost good faith' - one of the pillars of insurance contracts. It'll be logged as Cat S with DVLA, so whether the provider will automatically know will depend on how sophisticated their quoting systems are i.e whether they're connected to DVLA's lookup.

ChrisKnottIns said:

You'll need to tell the insurer, even if they don't specifically ask. It's a material fact and disclosure is required under the principle of 'utmost good faith' - one of the pillars of insurance contracts. It'll be logged as Cat S with DVLA, so whether the provider will automatically know will depend on how sophisticated their quoting systems are i.e whether they're connected to DVLA's lookup.

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This isn’t correct. ‘Utmost good faith’ no longer exists as an insurance concept either for commercial customers (replaces by ‘Fair Presentation’ under the Insurance Act) and more pertinently to private motor insurance, the Consumer Insurance Act which came in a mere 6 years ago.

This states that insurers must ask the questions they consider to be pertinent to the underwriting of the risk and that these need to be answered to the best of the proposers knowledge. If an insurer considers that a Class S write off is relevant to the terms they need to ask. There is absolutely no onus on the consumer to volunteer *any* information whatsoever.

Note I am a commercial insurance underwriter of some 20 years experience, DipCII qualified and have held posts as technical trainer at a major composite insurer. You could try repudiating a claim for a breach of utmost good faith but you’d not get very far.

EDIT: for clarity this of course only applies to UK insurance law.

That may be the case, but can you imagine trying to argue with an insurance company in a court after they've refused to pay out because of something they didn't ask about? Hmm, I wonder if you could use your legal cover from said insurance company to fight themselves in court?

Paulbean said:

That may be the case, but can you imagine trying to argue with an insurance company in a court after they've refused to pay out because of something they didn't ask about? Hmm, I wonder if you could use your legal cover from said insurance company to fight themselves in court?

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Would never get to court. FOS would be first port of call and it’d be slam dunk found against the insurer. To be honest I really don’t think they’d not pay a claim on this basis these days.

As I say this has been insurance law since 2013 so hardly a new thing for the industry and everyone has pretty much complied with it.

And no, you couldn’t use your motor legal expenses to fight it but you may we’ll be able to use your household legal cover if you have it

Note my specialism is insuring insurance brokers etc against such claims and we wouldn’t even fight it...

when I recently insured my cat s audi I told them and they said makes no difference to the insurance policy its also on my log book cat s if the vehicle is repaired at a reputable repairer there is no problem apart from when you go to sell it all my cars from 1978 till 2019 have either been salvage or beyond economical repair never had any problems

Hi.
We ask on all our quotations as to whether the vehicle is a write off or note. The vast majority of our insurance schemes no have no issue with it.
Regards,
Dan.