Received our renewal for our Home Insurance Policy. Enclosed was a leaflet with the following :

IMPORTANT INFORMATION

We are introducing some changes to your policy from this renewal. It is very important that your ead your new policy for full details of the changes. This leaflet is only a summary of the main changes and does not form part of the contract between us. If you have any questions, please do not hesitate to contact us.

Your Information

The following wording has been added

Credit Reference Agencies

To assess your insurance application and the terms on which cover may be offered, we may obtain information about you from credit reference agencies to check your credit status and identity. The agencies will record our enquiries. This will not affect your credit standing.

What does this mean if a person has default markers registered. They wont be offered insurance cover, or favourable terms ?

That seems totally wrong to me CB...it's also concerning as I have had about 5 defaults registered due to challenging the CCA's...is it just another excuse to put your premiums up I wonder??

Surely they've got no right to access CRA's without consent? So I guess that you have to sign to agree this on your application/renewal form??

I don't think that there's anything to worry about, they are disclosing to you that they are going to check with a Credit Reference Agency, presumably because they offer a pay monthly scheme, which is a form of credit and they want to be sure that you are trustworthy for credit.

I've never heard of anyone having CCJ's or other bad credit information having to pay a higher premium.

Mossy

We pay yearly, Mossycat. As a an ex employee of the Prudential OH gets discount and the payment is taken from his Pension. We have been with them for some 35 years now. Very strange.

I wasn't saying that you paid monthly, I was saying that because the Prudential offer a pay monthly service they might have updated their terms and conditions to reflect the fact that they might do a credit check on certain customers, hence why it is included in them

Note it does say 'they may', which would seem to substantiate this.

Mossy

Some companies have been doing this for years. RSA routinely check my file following an application for a quote. My file is not good but has never stopped them offering me terms. They have also been offering instalments quite freely.

Working for an insurance company I suspect their intention is probably more to do with an identity check than a check for creditworthiness. They can then check all their fraud databases etc.

its not just Prudential, alot of Churchill & RBS underwritten insurance policys have introduced this.

Thanks vusys1, I have just noticed Prudential Insurance is now underwritten by Churchill so they are probably just making sure all their policies are in line with each other.