25/06/2025
I think there are hundreds of thousands of people driving on the UK roads who would be surprised to find out that, if they had a crash, their insurance won’t cover them or their vehicle.
The reason?
- The driver put a football team sticker on their car or van.
- The van owner put sign writing on the side.
- The car was lovingly wrapped by a professional vehicle wrapper.
- The van driver carpeted the inside.
- The tradesperson bolted their expensive tool storage to the van floor and fitted some internal shelves.
- The car owner chose some optional extras to be factory fitted to their new car.
All these and many more examples can be seen by insurers as modifications.
When you fill out a proposal form or statement of fact for vehicle insurance, the question is often asked:
Does the vehicle have any modifications?
This is quite a broad, vague question. Sometimes insurers give examples (e.g. I recently saw: optional fit extras, vinyl wraps, sign writing, alloy wheels, suspension, bodywork, engine, audio, video and satellite navigation equipment all given as examples of what they consider to be modifications), but these are usually prefaced with the words including, but not limited to, meaning that the sky’s the limit with regard to what they might consider to be a modification.
The implications
If you don’t declare these and the insurer finds that you needed to, it can either:
- Charge a higher price for its insurance (known as the premium). This can be a small amount or could see premiums double (or more) with significant modifications.
- Void (cancel) your policy if they can show that they never would have insured a car or van with your modifications in the first place. This is bad news for reasons discussed below.
We recently dealt with a case where a VW T5 van owner had carpeted the inside of the van and removed the back seats (which could have been put back in). The vehicle suffered a not-at-fault accident and our client asked her insurer to help deal with it. As soon as the insurer saw the photos of the inside of the van, they told our client they would void their policy.
What this meant for them is that they would need to declare this every time they applied for insurance in the future. We’ve all seen the question:
Have you or any other policyholder ever had insurance refused, cancelled or voided? [some insurers ask if this has happened in the last five years, but the ever question is also pretty common]
By answering Yes to this question, the premiums rocketed from £300 per year to over £4,000, which made having a vehicle completely unaffordable. It could have also impacted their home insurance, pet insurance, travel insurance or any other insurance for which they would need to answer this question.
In this example, we sent the insurer a detailed letter explaining our client’s position and the insurer very quickly withdrew the voidance and let the policyholder cancel it instead (which meant they needed to find new insurance but wouldn’t have to answer the above question with a Yes).
One question which needs answering is what insurers are doing to let their customers know that they may not be covered. It’s not good enough for them to provide vague references to modifications and expect customers to know. It’s not good enough for them to allow customers to make what are generally very minor changes to a van or car and then not be covered. Having worked in-house for an insurer in Sydney, I well recognise that there are two types of insurer: those that will do almost anything to make sure their customer is looked after; and those who will immediately refuse a claim on any grounds possible and wait to see if the customer complains. Whichever type of insurer we are dealing with, I don’t think it is acceptable for them not to provide more information and support to customers prior to them taking out a van or car insurance policy.
Contact The Law Collective if you have had car or van insurance voided and need help. And CHECK YOUR INSURANCE!
