Insurance and modding

[lateralus]

as everyone has already mentioned, you will need to notify your insurer of any change in risk of your vehicle. more specifically, it relates to your duty of disclosure under section 21 of the insurance contracts act 1984 (cth).

an insurance company can deny your claim in FULL (meaning they will not pay for damage to either your vehicle or any other third party property damages), if they can demonstrate they would not have accepted your business if they were told earlier (this relates to section 54 of the insurance contracts act 1984)

each insurer has their own underwriting guidelines (ie. terms and conditions) which specify the amount of risk they are willing to accept. generally, the higher the risk the higher the premium, but they do have limits. their risk limits are in place to ensure the sustainability and profitability of their own business portfolio, and the cost of reinsurance.

in addition to about 500 other factors which are taken into account when calculating an insurance premium, generally the insurers who accept unlimited mods will have higher claims cost leakage and reinsurance, which increases your premium.

i say in addition to other factors as it does not necessarily mean a higher overall premium, as your risk address and age, etc. might buffer that other increase, resulting in an overall lower premium.

insurance is a **** load more complicated than that, but that's the gist of it :P

in short, tell them you've modded your car to prevent getting bitten on the ***** pretty hard at a later date

Edited October 20, 2011 by lateralus

[fillit]

just cars insures all legal modifications at no extra cost (Y)

[DJKOR]

just cars insures all legal modifications at no extra cost (Y)

Yeah... but they tend to have higher premiums in the first place which kinda offsets the "no extra cost".

[fillit]

depends on the insurance that you purchase. when i had my old car i was full comp with RACV as it was a new car.

with my ae111 only shannons and justcars insures it, so i'm on 3rd party fire and theft with an excess of around $1000? i believe my racv had a higher excess than that.

granted the benefit of racv is that they would fix up my ride, as for my ae111, they would generally write it off as parts are almost impossible to get and they don't believe in yahoo auctions :P (touch wood)

[xoom]

there is no point in risking not being covered ..... just have everything listed

[iVaz]

just cars insures all legal modifications at no extra cost (Y)

But isn't Just Car insurance run under AAMI?

& I donnu about you, but aren't AAMI quite slow? Slow at processing things? And you can ONLY go to their selected repairer?

[jeffy]

just cars insures all legal modifications at no extra cost (Y)

But isn't Just Car insurance run under AAMI?

& I donnu about you, but aren't AAMI quite slow? Slow at processing things? And you can ONLY go to their selected repairer?

yeah they are slow,

but no, you can go to your preffered panel beater.

You need to provide two quotes one from their repairer and one from yours, and they compare it and they select the "best" one according to them.

[iVaz]

just cars insures all legal modifications at no extra cost (Y)

But isn't Just Car insurance run under AAMI?

& I donnu about you, but aren't AAMI quite slow? Slow at processing things? And you can ONLY go to their selected repairer?

yeah they are slow,

but no, you can go to your preffered panel beater.

You need to provide two quotes one from their repairer and one from yours, and they compare it and they select the "best" one according to them.

Humm, oh well... Never knew that, because I remember when Niks smacked his car, he got owned with aami three months for his car to come back...

[DJKOR]

But isn't Just Car insurance run under AAMI?

They are, but it doesn't meant they can't run differently to AAMI.

just cars insures all legal modifications at no extra cost (Y)

& I donnu about you, but aren't AAMI quite slow? Slow at processing things? And you can ONLY go to their selected repairer?

yeah they are slow,

Humm, oh well... Never knew that, because I remember when Niks smacked his car, he got owned with aami three months for his car to come back...

Insurance companies are always a mixed bag. I have had three claims sorted by AAMI in the past and on two of the occasions, they have had the car back to me in 1 and 1.5 weeks respectively. After making the claim too, they were available as soon as the next day for me to drop the car off at an assessment centre. The third claim took them a few weeks to get the cheque to my door, but I happened to make a claim at the same time there were storms etc happening and damaging houses etc, so I cut them some slack because others were experiencing greater problems than I was.