Claims and Underwriting Exchange

Since 6 April 2013, the Consumer Insurance (Disclosure and Representations) Act 2012 no longer requires a British consumer to volunteer everything: they only have to take reasonable care in answering the questions asked. The insurer checks the rest itself, and the Claims and Underwriting Exchange is where it looks. The database, run by the Motor Insurers' Bureau, receives from participating insurers the motor, home and personal injury claims reported to them, with the person, address, vehicle, date and status of the file. It is used at two moments. At underwriting, it compares the history declared by the applicant with the claims actually recorded, notably to validate a no-claims discount or spot an undisclosed claim. When a claim is opened, it brings up multiple claims for the same loss with several companies and profiles that come back too often. Finding an omission then opens the remedies of the 2012 Act: avoidance if the misrepresentation was deliberate or reckless, a proportionate remedy if it was merely careless, a logic close to that of articles L. 113-8 and L. 113-9 of the French Insurance Code. The database has known flaws. An incident that was merely notified, without any claim for payment, can appear in it and weigh on a premium, which policyholders regularly complain about. Matching errors on an address or a common name happen, and anyone can request their record from the MIB under the right of access. It is about events and not about people found to be fraudulent, which sets it apart from the Insurance Fraud Register. France has no equivalent of the same breadth; the motor relevé d'informations, the claims history statement, stands in for it on a narrower scope.