At last! Claim-free years will soon be transferable

Did your partner pass away? Did you have a lease for many years? Or did you live abroad for several years? Then you may have noticed that the premium for car insurance can sometimes be quite disappointing. Often in these situations claim-free years are not taken into account. This can make the premium a lot higher. Fortunately, this will finally change on January 1, 2022.  

download press release

Claim-free years for surviving partners

Claim-free years are personal. You only accrue claim-free years if there is a car insurance policy in your name. If you and your partner share a car, but your partner is the policyholder, you do not accrue any claim-free years yourself. Therefore, when your partner dies and you take over the car, the premium for the car insurance will probably be a lot more expensive, because there are no claim-free years in your name. However, as of January 1, pure claim-free years can be officially transferred to the partner left behind. Fortunately, most insurance companies are already lenient about this at the moment. This is also the experience of Nick van Ballegooijen, Operational Manager at Alpina: "The parties we work with are really not difficult about this. We ourselves have not yet experienced a situation where this was refused by the insurer."

When your partner passes away, you have other things on your mind than claim-free years. That's why it's nice that there will soon be a unified policy so you don't have to worry about that. "I think it's a nice change. That way you know for sure that all noses are pointed in the same direction," van Ballegooijen said.

From lease car to own car

If you have a leased car, the car and car insurance are in the name of the leasing company. Therefore, you do not build up any claim-free years yourself. However, you can request a lease statement from your lease company after the end of the lease period. At the moment, car insurers still deal with this in different ways. Most do award claim-free years accumulated during the lease period based on a lease statement. Some only give a premium discount. You lose that when you switch.

From January 1, 2022, however, lease drivers can use a lease statement to have pure claim-free years entered into Roy-data by the insurer. Van Ballegooijen thinks this is a good development: "Soon you will be able to get credits as well as claim-free years. That gives customers the freedom to make a good switch to another company." Even if you have lived abroad for years, as of January 1 you can easily register claim-free years from a foreign insurance company.

Accommodating young drivers

Nice developments are taking place in the industry, but there is still room for improvement. "Making claim-free years also transferable to children would be a good development." Says van Ballegooijen. Often young people also drive their parents' car before buying their own. However, these claim-free years are currently still lost. A shame, because car insurance is already quite expensive for young drivers. "Damage-free years are very decisive for the amount of the premium. For young drivers, the premium is often already very high. Moreover, there are a lot of insurers who don't want young drivers." It would therefore be nice if we could accommodate young drivers a little.