Not upheld: claims handling, communication failures, liability determination, refusal to disclose engineer's report complaint against UK Insurance Limited trading as Darwin (UKI)

Decision detail

Summary

Mr S complained about UK Insurance Limited's (UKI) handling of a motor insurance claim following a July 2025 accident where his car collided with another vehicle while he was merging lanes. Mr S disputed UKI's decision to hold him liable, the settlement of the third party's total loss claim, and UKI's failure to communicate about the claim or share the engineer's damage report. The ombudsman found that UKI reasonably determined Mr S was at fault based on his own account of the incident, and that even if UKI had informed Mr S about the third party's claim, Mr S lacked credible evidence to dispute the engineer's findings or prevent settlement. The ombudsman upheld UKI's refusal to share third party data on data protection grounds and found the £75 compensation already paid for communication failures to be reasonable.

The Ombudsman's reasoning

The ombudsman found that Mr S, as the merging driver, bore responsibility for ensuring it was safe to change lanes, and therefore UKI acted fairly in determining he was at fault. Although UKI failed to inform Mr S about the third party's claim until after settlement, the ombudsman concluded this would not have changed the outcome because: (1) the two cars clearly collided; (2) Mr S's unsupported assertion of no damage to the third party's car would not be persuasive without expert inspection or photographic evidence; (3) modern cars can have hidden damage not immediately apparent; (4) the third party's engineer's report with images supported damage to the front bumper; and (5) given the low pre-accident value of the 13-year-old vehicle with high mileage, a total loss determination was reasonable even for seemingly minor damage. The ombudsman also found UKI's refusal to share third party data with Mr S was reasonable on data protection grounds.

How this compares

Source

Read the original decision on the Financial Ombudsman Service website