I just asked this question in the "Ask a question bit" and from the answer I obviously didn't explain it properly...lol

My question was "Something I have noticed the past few years which is starting to get rather annoying and now expensive is that insurance companies are not listing ACTUAL numbers of years no claims anymore. My last accident/claim was 12 years ago however my renewal from More Than (for 3 years in a row) only stated "6 or more years".. which meant that a new insurer would only accept it as 6 years (rather than 12 for which I have no evidence)..

This new insurer's paperwork says "5 or more years".. Now I'm presuming that the renewal paperwork for this company will also state "5 or more years" as it's obviously all they record. That means my next insurance will have to be based on 5 years no claims (instead of 13! - well assuming I don't have a claim this year)

Is this just yet another way that insurance firms conspire to get more money from us?

Is there any way to get an actual official record that I have 12 years no claims that would be accepted by an insurer... since they claim to all be linked and use databases to check everything, surely the days of having to provide letters should be behind us!?"

The answer I got was "You don't get extra NCD after the number of years the insurer counts." which I appreciate but wasn't what I was meaning...

I know that with my CURRENT insurer I won't get more than 5 years NCD... the problem is when I come to change to an insurer who does...

e.g.

Suppose last year I was with Insurer X who confirmed I had a maximum (for their company) 8 years NCD but it was cheaper to go with insurer Y at renewal...

Now insurer Y do their max NCD at 5 years so all their documentation says 5 or more years...

At the end of that policy I decide to switch back to Insurer X but find that because Insurer Y only lists a maximum 5 years, I no longer get maximum NCD at Insurer X, despite ACTUALLY having more than the 8 years they require for this..

This seems more than unfair, being forced to take more expensive cover purely down to the poor recording keeping of these damned companies! They all keep claiming to be linked up to various databases however seem to rely on a piece of paper from your previous insurer instead of this "phantom" database...