Car Insurance companies missing a trick?

[Grimezy]

As somebody that has spent an awful lot of time filling out car insurance quotes just to try and find cars that I can afford, etc it sprang to me the other day that it would be so much easier if I could just type in my Driving License number and it auto-completes as much of the form as possible. It would have your name, address, how long you'd held your license, whether you had any points, how much no claims you have, etc etc. It would make things so much quicker.

They already do a similar thing with your car choice as now you just have to stick the reg plate in and it'll auto-fill the rest of the details. Could doing a similar thing with your license number not be feasible? Am I missing anything blatantly obvious that would mean this method wouldn't work as I'm seriously beginning to think of suggesting it to a few companies.

I think on one comparison site I have over 90 different quotes trying out different cars, etc. And that's only on one site... I appreciate that not everybody is as bothered as I am about car insurance but I know in my first year the smallest details could massively change my premiums and I was having to use a ridiculous amount of different sites having to input my new details each time. If I could have typed in like a 12 digit number that would have made things a lot easier... My insurance is much better now but I still think it would be convenient to speed up the process. I'm generally quite a quick PC-user so the forms don't take me a huge amount of time anyway but I imagine for somebody who isn't that great on computers it must take them an age and this would surely help? What do you think?

 

[Rakk]

They already do a similar thing with your car choice as now you just have to stick the reg plate in and it'll auto-fill the rest of the details. Could doing a similar thing with your license number not be feasible? Am I missing anything blatantly obvious that would mean this method wouldn't work as I'm seriously beginning to think of suggesting it to a few companies.

The car reg thing only ever returns the car details though I think for which the insurance companies will have access to all those details from the DVLA, however, I suspect driving license details are not available at all and the DVLA giving them all out to all insurance companies I suspect would break a lot of DPA laws, least that's what I reckon.

 

[Grimezy]

The car reg thing only ever returns the car details though I think for which the insurance companies will have access to all those details from the DVLA, however, I suspect driving license details are not available at all and the DVLA giving them all out to all insurance companies I suspect would break a lot of DPA laws, least that's what I reckon.

Hmmm I thought that might be the case. Would be nice if they could release a restricted amount of information just for insurance use providing that they don't disclose anything that would allow them to contact you directly. I would have thought insurance companies would have some kind of link with DVLA to make sure people weren't lying about the amount of points they have, etc but maybe not!

 

[steaky360]

I agree with Rakk here, I'd imagine the insurance companies would get the big ban hammer if they tried to access said information anyway.

Only advice I can give is that the comparison sites seem to remember your details so you can just edit quotes and change the car reg each time to look for different cars.

 

[Yamikotai]

I suspect driving license details are not available at all and the DVLA giving them all out to all insurance companies I suspect would break a lot of DPA laws

Got it in one, though the site would merely have to stipulate that you're turning them into a data controller for your information. However I think there are non-DPA reasons, such as the DVLA holding an intentional monopoly of sorts on control and storage of issued ID.

 

[Rakk]

I would have thought insurance companies would have some kind of link with DVLA to make sure people weren't lying about the amount of points they have, etc but maybe not!

However if you do lie and then you have to claim on your insurance, they will then find out you were lying and at which point I suspect your insurance is voided due to you lying, at which point you're in a much deeper pile of ....

*note: this is speculation

 

[Grimezy]

Only advice I can give is that the comparison sites seem to remember your details so you can just edit quotes and change the car reg each time to look for different cars.

Yea I do try to do that whenever I can hence why I ended up with 90+ from one site. Not always ideal as comparison sites can occasionally be a bit of a rip off so I like to keep off their radar if I can. The only ones that ever come up cheap for me on ther e are Admiral anyway. Plus my passwords seem to change each time I try to retrieve my account details xD

 

[Grimezy]

However if you do lie and then you have to claim on your insurance, they will then find out you were lying and at which point I suspect your insurance is voided due to you lying, at which point you're in a much deeper pile of ....

*note: this is speculation

Yea I 100% agree. My best friend is currently insurance 'fronting' on his parents policy. He has been for 3 years and gets his insurance for about a third of the price as the rest of us. He's had 2 or 3 very near miss accidents and has lucky not to be found out really. Yet he's still building his named driver insurance with Directline quite happily even though Directline still won't even give me a quote for a 1 litre car! Just doesn't seem justified to me.

Edit: I know that isn't really anything to do with the whole license number thing but it's on the same lines as being in deep doo-doo if he gets caught!