Assured Value

**Trigger** Sat Nov 22, 2008 4:56 pm

Does anyone have any advice with this. My insurance is due next month and I am getting a second car to use everyday to work allowing me to insure the Lotus for alot less as a second car with limited mileage. Advantage is that I can get assured value on it which is a huge thing for me. Do I need to get the car given a value and if so who can do it? I am pretty sure Paul Matty offered this to me when I bought the car from him last year.

Thanks for any help on this ...

**the83man** Sat Nov 22, 2008 8:03 pm

This is the text of an article thatI wrote for Chicance a year or so ago. It's not a full answer but it does give some ideas about insurance. For agreed value or reinstatment value you will need to get a proper valuation at some point. I hope it helps. I know that Aon can offer reinstatement cover but no doubt there are others.

I’ve often wondered just how much money I’ve spent on Lotus cars over the years. It’s not just the purchase price, usually very reasoanble for a Lotus compared with other so-called sports or supercars, but also the cost of all the fettling, servicing, repairs and replacement parts over the years of ownership. I’ve decided that I’ll just keep on wondering for I’m sure that if I worked it out with any degree of accuracy I would get rid of them now, especially if Mrs Stripe found out……!

Most of us have insurance on our cars and most of us, I suspect, take insurance for granted. It is something we buy for two reasons. First, the law requires us to in case we inflict damage on some other poor soul who interupted our enjoyment. Second we believe that we will get some sort of recompense if it does all go wrong and we will get back some or all of the cash we’ve invested in our pride an joy. But will we? It is so important to properly declare the facts when buying insurance because insurance companies are businesses and the first thing they will try to do is avoid having to pay you, or anybody else, any money. Most of us don’t have accidents and that is how they make their money but when it does go wrong, for us, it can be horribly expensive for them - and if we are not careful for us as well. A common area of conflict is in vehicle ‘write–off’ or ‘total loss’ cases. There is potentially huge disparity between what we believe our car is worth and what an insurance company thinks it is worth and therefore whether they are prepared to underwritre the cost of repairs. Whether a vehicle is written off or not is usually the decision of the insurance company’s appointed vehicle inspector who may not be a Lotus fan or care that Jim Clark once drove it. One thing is for sure; when a car is formaly written off, it is de-registered and, technically, no longer exists. I know of several tales of new chassis being fitted to Lotus cars and DVLA insisting that it is therefore a ‘new’ car and refusing to allow the original registration to be attached to it, and a ‘Q’ plate on a Lotus just doesn’t seem right!

At this point it is probably worth noting that there are several classes of vehicle write-off, also known as salvage. A Category A write-off is for scrap only and will be crushed. It should never reappear on the road and there are no economically salvageable parts - a totally burnt-out vehicle is a good example. With a Category B write-offthe body shell will be crushed and the vehicle should never reappear on the road, but it can be broken for spare parts plus any residual scrap metal. Category C covers an extensively damaged car that the insurer decides not to repair. DVLA will allow it to be repaired and put back on the road but it must pass a Vehicle Identity Check (VIC) under a scheme introduced to deter ‘ringing’, or copying a car’s identity; insurers must notify DVLA of all cars ‘written off’ within salvage categories A, B or C. This notification will set a ‘VIC marker’ against the DVLA vehicle record and DVLA will not issue a registration certificate until the identity is confirmed at a nominated testing station. A slightly damaged car that is easily repairable might be written off Category D; if and when fixed it can be re-registered as a ‘damaged repaired’ car. But Cat D write-offs can be the most contentious. Think about this; a car is worth, say, £5,000, and is slightly damaged so that it will cost £2,000 for a (insurance inflated) repair that includes the cost of a courtesy car for you while the car is off the road. If the insurer can sell the car off for parts for, say, £3,500, the insurer could write it off as a Cat D, saving itself £500, (that’s £5000 paid to you with a return of £3500 = £1500 against the £2000 repair costs). Finally, a Category F vehicle is one that has been damaged by fire and the insurer has decided not to repair; when restored it can be re-registered as ‘damaged repaired’. I’m sure many of you are ahead of me at the moment and are thinking about what is known as ‘agreed value’ insurance. Many of us have this and what it does is to recognise that there is no obvious market value for our cars and guarantee a minimum payout based on what the car might reasonably be expected to fetch if sold in its undamaged state. We’re usually happy to have an agreed value equal to or greater than what we actually paid for the car but that isn’t always achievable. I’m sure many of us think that it is good enough to survive the write-off scenario. But, there are two things that are worth noting. One; as super cars go, a Lotus is a cheap car and it may well cost more to repair even a slightly damaged car than the market or agreed value and it could easily be written off by the insurance company under category D. Two; if Jim Clark did drive your car, or it has some genuine historic interest that gives it true value do you want it to be written off as Cat A, B or C or would you rather have enough money to preserve an important piece of history?

If you want to recover your investment rather than to have a simple payout when things go wrong then you need insurance to match that aspiration. There is an answer and it is ‘reinstatement value’. Some enlightened insurance companies are realising that it may cost more to repair a car with specialist parts, or through a particularly skilled repairer, than it can achieve in the market place but that there may be good reasons why it shouldn’t be written off. They now offer a ‘reinstatement value’ up to 50% over the ‘agreed value’. They charge for it, of course, but the increase is quite small. We should be in the business of preserving as many Lotus cars as possible, particularly those of low market value such as early Esprits, Elites, Eclats and the like. When you next insure your car insist on a ‘reinstatement value’ quote and if they will not give you one go elsewhere for they do not understand the passion that exists in one-make car clubs. Once you have your enhanced insurance the engineer is less likely to write off your car and tell the DVLA that it must be destroyed. That has to be the way forward. But if you do need some legal advice to prevent a write off you could try the free legal advice insurance being offered to LDC members and outlined elsewhere in this issue.

**Trigger** Thu Dec 04, 2008 8:37 pm

Thanks Mike, I will certainly have a look at this Very Happy

**dpr59** Fri Dec 05, 2008 2:34 pm

I'm insured with Lancaster.
They do an assured value but I've not taken the option.
For the litrature all they need is current photos to assess condition and agree a value.

Dave

**Trigger** Fri Dec 05, 2008 2:39 pm

dpr59 wrote:I'm insured with Lancaster.
They do an assured value but I've not taken the option.
For the litrature all they need is current photos to assess condition and agree a value.

Dave

I'm currently with Lancaster Classic Insurance and am waiting on a renewal quote from them but I always said id like to push for agreed value this year as I am in not situation that if I lost the car to get a few thousand for it. Did they tell you that to agree a value you would need to send them details and photos for them to access?

**dpr59** Thu Dec 18, 2008 10:10 pm

Sorry for the late reply......

Ok I'm not I've been on holiday..........and that's another story. LOL

I didn't take the agreed valuation option.
With the current values of Excels it wouldn't take much to right one off.
Repairs I'm sure I'd think worthwhile. Up to a point.

From the renewal date all I would have had to supply was current pics (if memory serves !!!)

Have they got back to you yet ?

**the83man** Fri Dec 19, 2008 12:25 am

dpr59 wrote:
I didn't take the agreed valuation option. With the current values of Excels it wouldn't take much to right one off.
?

Which is exactly why you should investigate reinstatement value as opposed to agreed value. With agreed value you will only ever get the market value of a car - not very much for an Excel - but with reinstatement value you might get enough money to repair it. Aon will give 150% of agreed value for a small extra premium and might be emough to repair the car and keep it on the road rather it become an 'insurance' write off.

Sponsored content

Assured Value

Assured Value

Re: Assured Value

Re

Re: Assured Value

Re: Assured Value

Re: Assured Value

Re: Assured Value

Re: Assured Value