Accused of fronting

[Deen21]

Hello,

Desperate for advice - **no trolls please.

My wife had a car accident where the car has been written off cat S.
The problem we have is we have been accused of fronting by the insurance.
My wife owned a Hyundai i10 which she had insured with me as a second driver ( I also own a car). As an anniversary present in 2020 I purchased her a Renault Megane, she called the insurance and they changed the vehicle.

The Insurance is still in my wife’s name as first driver and me as second however it also says she is the registered keeper which is incorrect. The V5 is in my name as I purchased the car for her but she does everything i.e MOT, Road Tax, Servicing etc. Due to this we have been accused of fronting.

This is not true it is just an unfortunate mistake that wasn’t amended when the vehicle was changed. We have been completely honest in everything else informing insurers when we moved etc.

If anything else it would have probably been cheaper to have me as the main driver as I am older I am 27 my wife is 24. My wife has held her licence for 5 years but only driven for 2 and I have held my licence for 2 years and driven for 2.

I should also mention her excess on this policy is double what mine is.

Does anyone have experience with something like this and what was the outcome. My main fear is the

That’s quite unusual, my understanding is that when it comes to spouses, insurers don’t tend to worry about who the RK is. Fronting is normally when parents insure their kid’s car with the parent as the main driver. Does this insurer view you as significantly higher risk or something and suspect you’re the main driver? Can’t see why they’d think that when you have your own car.

Nope, if anything i’m less of risk. My excess on the policy is half of my wife's as they have added a young and inexperienced fee on hers.
My wife has responded explaining the situation hopefully shouldn’t be too long until we receive a reply.
The only worry is as the car has been written off we need to money to buy another car without it we are stuck as we both require cars for our jobs.

Surely if the higher risk driver is named as the main driver I can’t possibly see how it could be fronting. You are absolutely not trying to reduce your premiums. I suspect they’ll see sense.

You can raise a complaint about the way in which your claim is being handled (the complaint is not that they haven't paid out etc, which they are entitled to do if they so assess it, but the complaint is that an overlooked detail from a previous vehicle is wrongly affecting the claim and it should not, as this was an honest mistake and not relevant to the incident and you would have remedied it immediately had you noticed - and in addition you had no motivation to actively lie to them as there was no benefit to you to leave it that way).

They then have 8 weeks to review the complaint and get back to you with a final resolution (this is likely to be quicker than 8 weeks however). If the response you get is unsatisfactory you can pursue it with the financial ombudsman service.

If you do go to the FOS, make sure to specify in your complaint that you want to make sure there are no fraud markers on your credit history and that they will not record it as a cancellation of your insurance which would affect you getting insurance cover again as insurers share this kind of information.