Following on from this: LAMP insurance in liquidation, our competitor Warranty Direct has announced that GAP insurance policies sold via their GAPCoverInsurance.co.uk website until May of this year are going to be cancelled effective from August 29th. They’ve published a list of FAQ’s here too.
If you have a GAP insurance policy underwritten by LAMP, you’ll now need to source alternative cover… here’s how we (GAPinsurance.co.uk) might be able to assist you:
Contract Hire vehicles delivered after February 21st 2019
We may be able to offer you Contract Hire GAP insurance. See here for more details (available for vehicles delivered up 6-months ago).
Vehicles purchased (cash or finance) and delivered after May 21st 2019
We may be able to offer you Invoice GAP insurance or (if the vehicle was brand new and you were the first registered keeper) Replacement GAP insurance.
For more details about Invoice GAP insurance, see here (available for vehicles delivered up to 3-months ago).
For more details about Replacement GAP insurance, see here (available for vehicles first registered up to 3-months ago).
Vehicles outside of the above criteria
If your vehicle is less than 8-years old, worth no more than £80,000 and isn’t specifically excluded from cover, we may be able to offer you Top-Up GAP insurance. See here for more details.
Why you should avoid unrated insurers:
LAMP insurance is the FIFTH unrated insurer of GAP insurance to have gone bust since 2016 (both Enterprise & Elite insurance of Gibraltar along with both Alpha & Qudos insurance in Denmark being the other four that went to the wall previously). In each of the other cases another insurer stepped in to purchase the still live policies and allow cover to continue in one form or another. It was however only a matter of time, before an unrated insurer of GAP insurance went bust and no other insurer stepped in – as people with LAMP underwritten policies are now experiencing.
Even today, despite the increased risks of using an unrated insurer, many of our online competitors do so in pursuit of offering the lowest possible premiums. All of them will tell you that it’s “safe” because your policy is covered by the Financial Services Compensation Scheme (FSCS) but, what they usually fail to make explicitly clear is, that if the insurer goes bust and your policy is cancelled before you need to make a claim, the FSCS is actually only good for 90% of a pro-rata amount of the price paid for the policy – meagre compensation if your policy is cancelled when you’re then too late to source equivalent cover from elsewhere and left without cover as a result.
It’s a message we’ve been harping on about for years. In our >15 years of trading, we (GAPinsurance.co.uk) have only ever and will only ever use A-Rated insurers. It might mean that our policies are a little more expensive but, the chances of an A-Rated insurer going bust are considerably less, which means the insurer is more likely to be around when you need to call upon the policy if your vehicle is written off.
In our opinion, unrated underwriters of GAP insurance should be avoided at all costs, it’s just too much of a risk – if you’re currently considering cover or have recently purchased cover underwritten by an unrated insurer (generally speaking, unrated insurers are usually based in Gibraltar, Denmark or Malta – but not necessarily), you may want to reconsider your options again whilst you may still have the opportunity to source cover from elsewhere.
If you’re concerned about any of the above and wish to discuss your GAP insurance options, please get in touch on either 01484 490095 or support@gapinsurance.co.uk.
