How to Claim for a Non-Fault Accident: Yours or Theirs?

Your insurer, theirs, or a claims firm: the short answer

You have three ways to claim for a non-fault accident. You can claim on your own policy and let your insurer chase the other side. You can claim directly against the other driver's insurer. Or you can hand the whole thing to an accident management company.

Each comes with a cost. Your own policy usually means paying the excess up front and waiting to get it back. Going direct means doing the chasing yourself. A claims firm usually means signing a credit agreement in your name.

Whichever you pick, tell your own insurer first. This page is part of our guide to accidents and claims.

Your three options

The Financial Ombudsman Service lists the same three routes in its guidance on credit hire and repair after a non-fault accident. You can claim on your own policy, recover your costs from the other insurer directly or use a "non-fault service". That last one usually means an accident management company.

Claim on your own policy

This is the simple route. You ring your insurer, they repair the car and they pursue the other driver's insurer for the money. You'll usually pay your excess first and get it back later. More on that below.

Once you've claimed, the claim belongs to your insurer.

Direct Line's car policy booklet, December 2025 edition, says it's entitled to "take over and carry out the negotiation, defence or settlement of any claim in your name". The same booklet says you must not admit liability or negotiate to settle without its permission. Other insurers' wording differs in detail, so read yours.

Claim directly against the other driver's insurer

You don't have to involve your own policy at all. You can write to the other driver's insurer, send your evidence and repair estimate, and ask them to pay. No excess, because you haven't claimed on your own cover.

The catch is that you're doing the work. You're also dealing with a company whose job is to pay you as little as it fairly can. If they dispute who was at fault, you're on your own unless you go back to your insurer or pay for legal help. For what to expect when their insurer rings you first, read our guide to the third-party insurer calling after an accident.

Use an accident management company

An accident management company offers to handle everything for nothing. It arranges your repair and a replacement car on credit, then bills the other driver's insurer. If that insurer pays in full, you usually pay nothing.

That "if" is the whole business model. The ombudsman says firms should warn you about it. If the other insurer disputes liability or the amount, you "may have to cooperate in the recovery of or even become liable for those costs". The ombudsman also says it usually can't look at complaints about the company's service under a credit hire agreement.

You'd be outside your policy, and a problem with the hire or the repair would usually be outside the ombudsman's reach too. It can still look at whether your insurer or broker was fair to refer you.

What it costs you while liability is still open

The other driver admitting fault at the roadside doesn't settle the claim. Their insurer still has to accept liability, and that can take time. Until it does, a non-fault claim through your own policy costs you in three places.

The excess comes first.

Take Direct Line's booklet. It won't charge an excess where "you're in an accident that we believe is not your fault and we can make a full recovery of our costs". It then adds that you may have to pay it while the claim is looked into. You get it refunded once you're proven not to blame and the costs are recovered.

That two-step process is common. The Financial Conduct Authority's 2025 review of motor claims describes it the same way: you pay the excess, with a view to getting it back from the at-fault insurer. Check your own wording for the exact terms.

Then there are the losses your policy never covered. A hire car if you don't have hire cover, personal items in the car, lost earnings. These are called uninsured losses.

Your core cover doesn't pay them, so you claim them from the other driver's insurer yourself, or legal expenses cover or a claims firm does it for you. Direct Line's Motor Legal Cover, for one, pays the costs of claiming them.

And your renewal may land in the middle of it. An open claim can be rated as a fault claim until the money comes back. The next chapter explains why.

Will this affect my no-claims discount?

It depends on your insurer, and on whether they get their money back.

Your no-claims discount, the discount you earn for each year without a claim, isn't a "no blame" discount. An ombudsman decision from February 2026 puts it plainly. The discount is "fairly reduced" by the insurer when there's a fault claim, "but it can be reinstated if the claim is ultimately settled as 'non-fault'".

So what counts as non-fault? Recovery of costs, not who was to blame. In a 2019 decision, a driver was hit while stationary at traffic lights by a car on cloned plates. Her insurer couldn't trace the other driver, couldn't recover its outlay, and recorded the claim as a fault one.

The ombudsman agreed it was entitled to. Recording a claim as fault "isn't saying that she was liable", it said. It reflects that the insurer "hasn't, for whatever reason, been able to recover all its outlay on the claim from the third party".

What does that mean for you? If the other insurer pays in full, the claim can be settled as non-fault and your discount reinstated. How your policy handles the premium in the meantime is down to its wording.

Direct Line's uninsured driver promise is one written example: once it confirms the uninsured driver was to blame, it repays the excess, restores the discount and refunds any extra premium. If the money doesn't come back, the claim can stay on your record as fault, however blameless you were.

If the other driver was uninsured

There's no insurer to claim from, so the Motor Insurers' Bureau steps in. The MIB is the industry body that compensates victims of uninsured and untraced drivers. Gov.uk says you may be able to claim from it if you've been injured or your property has been damaged by an uninsured driver. It also says you should tell the police.

MIB's own eligibility page sets the time limits. Property damage claims can be made up to six years after the accident in England and Wales, and five years in Scotland. You'll need proof of the damage and an estimated or actual repair cost.

Two things the current agreement doesn't do. I read the 2015 Uninsured Drivers' Agreement and its 2017 supplement, which cover England, Scotland and Wales. Neither imposes an excess on a property damage claim. Neither makes you prove an injury before it will pay for your car.

You'll see both of those claims repeated online. Both are real rules, but they belong to the 2017 Untraced Drivers' Agreement, which applies when the driver can't be found. It pays for property damage only after a significant personal injury award from the same event, and takes off an excess.

One thing it does do. Under clause 6, MIB won't pay for any part of a loss you could claim from your own insurer, even if you chose not to claim. So if you have comprehensive cover, the car damage goes through your policy. MIB is for what's left over, such as your excess and other uninsured losses.

If you have comprehensive cover, I'd claim on it and let your insurer deal with MIB. Direct Line's booklet, for one, promises that once it confirms the uninsured driver was to blame, you won't pay an excess and your discount won't be affected. Not every policy has that promise, so check yours.

In Northern Ireland, a separate 2023 Uninsured Drivers' Agreement applies to accidents from 1 January 2024. It has the same rule about losses your own insurer would cover. It also keeps a rule the rest of the UK dropped in 2017. MIB won't pay for damage to your own car if that car was itself uninsured and you knew, or had reason to believe, it was.

For a driver who can't be traced at all, the rules are different and tighter. Our guide to a hit-and-run on a parked car covers that.

When this isn't the right page

This page covers the damage to your car. Some situations need a different guide.

• You were hurt. Injury claims have their own three-year limit and their own process. Start with the claims portal or a solicitor.
• The driver didn't stop. The MIB's untraced driver rules apply, and they're stricter than the uninsured ones. Read hit-and-run on a parked car.
• Your car is a write-off. That's a total loss, where the insurer pays the car's value instead of repairing it. Our guide to what happens when your car is written off covers the valuation and what you can argue about.
• You haven't claimed yet and the other side is already calling. See the third-party insurer called after an accident.

A write-off follows the car, not just you.

If the insurer writes your car off, that goes on an insurance-industry record of written-off and stolen vehicles. A history check can show it years later when the car is sold. That's what our guide to checking a car's accident history is about.

And if yours was written off, you're about to shop for another, so run a free car check on anything you look at.

How long do you have to claim?

Longer than you'd think for the car, less for yourself.

In England and Wales, a claim for damage to your car is a claim in tort. Section 2 of the Limitation Act 1980 gives you six years from the date the cause of action accrued. For a crash, that's the date of the crash.

Injury runs on a different clock. Section 11 of the same Act gives three years for a claim that includes damages for personal injury. Same accident, shorter limit. The injury side belongs on our guide to the claims portal or a solicitor.

Scotland works differently. The Prescription and Limitation (Scotland) Act 1973 extinguishes the obligation to pay damages after five years. Section 11 of that Act starts the clock when the damage occurred, or later if you couldn't reasonably have known about the loss, its cause and who was responsible. The wording was amended by the Prescription (Scotland) Act 2018, with changes in force from 1 June 2022 and 28 February 2025.

Northern Ireland has its own law and it matches England and Wales on the numbers. Article 6 of the Limitation (Northern Ireland) Order 1989 gives six years for an action founded on tort. Article 7 gives three years for personal injury.

Those are the outer limits, not targets. Insurers expect to hear about an accident promptly. Direct Line's booklet says to let it know "as quickly as possible" even if you don't claim. Before renewal you must tell it about any incident, "even if they didn't claim or were not to blame".

Gov.uk says the same: report the accident to your insurer even if you're not planning to claim.

Nobody publishes a figure for how long a non-fault claim takes from your side.

The nearest is the FCA's 2025 review of motor claims. Across the 12 firms it surveyed, claims for damage to the policyholder's own car took an average of 240 days in 2023 to settle completely for the insurer. That includes any money it recovered from the other side. The FCA says the wait for policyholders is "significantly shorter".

A disputed claim can run far longer than an admitted one.

Common questions