Do claim-free years go per car or per person?
When you drive a car, you build up claim-free years. For every year that you have no claims, you get one claim-free year. Your claim-free years affect the amount of the premium. The more claim-free years you have, the more premium discount you get. So you pay less for your car insurance. We often get the question whether claim-free years are per car or per person. Claim-free years are personal. Only the policyholder, the person in whose name the car insurance is registered, accrues claim-free years.
How exactly do claim-free years work?
Claim-free years are years in which you do not claim any damage to your insurer. By driving damage-free, you get a discount on the insurance premium. The more claim-free years you have, the lower the premium. Claim-free years are recorded in Roy-Data. Roy Data is the central database of the EPS Foundation (Efficient Processes Claims Insurers). When you cancel a car insurance policy, the insurer registers your accumulated claim-free years. When you subsequently take out a new car insurance policy, your new insurer consults the Roy Data database to see how many claim-free years you have. As a result, when you take out a new car insurance policy, you no longer need to provide a paper termination statement.
Claim-free years are personal
As we mentioned earlier, claim-free years are personal. If you are the policyholder, they are in your name. So you do not accrue claim-free years if the car insurance is not in your name, even though you may drive the car as often as the policyholder. Does the policyholder have multiple vehicles in his or her name? Then the claim-free years are accrued per vehicle. Even if you are listed as a regular driver on the policy, you yourself do not accrue claim-free years.
Carry over claim-free years
As of 1-1-2022, claim-free years can be transferred in some situations, such as death. The claim-free years of the deceased can be transferred to the surviving partner. Now sometimes this was already possible, but it depended on the insurance company. As of January 1, the regulation applies to all insurers affiliated with the Dutch Association of Insurers. However, the partner must live at the same address and have a driver's license.
The transfer of claim-free years will also be possible for lease drivers. Lease drivers do not accrue any damage-free years themselves, because the car insurance is in the name of the lease company. However, they can already request a lease statement. On this basis, most car insurers do award claim-free years, but some only give a premium discount. You lose this if you switch car insurers. From January you can use a lease statement to have pure claim-free years recorded in Roy Data by the insurer.
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