The long arm of the law

Have you been convicted of a crime? Well, if you haven't, someone you know probably has. The word 'crime' probably makes you think of the serious stuff like armed robbery or GBH, but there are around 7 million people in the UK with an unspent conviction, many of them for minor offences. But even if it is minor and it happened some time ago, your insurance company will want to know about it. The only time you don't have to tell insurers about convictions is once they become 'spent'. Failure to declare a conviction could mean your cover is invalid.

Insurers say they make it clear that they want to know about previous convictions, but I'm not convinced they do. I can understand why they would want to know about someone who has a fondness for arson before they offer to insure their home (likewise fraud). But I do believe that a number of insurers don't spell out clearly what information they require.

Whizzing around a few household insurers' websites this week, some listed a number of 'assumptions' on screen that they make about someone (for example, that you wouldn't leave the house empty for more than 30 days a year, didn't run a business from your home and didn't have any convictions), others asked you to click on a box to find out what those assumptions were. Is that clear? Hmm, I'm not sure it is.

If you renew your insurance every year with the same company, you won't even be asked about this issue specifically. Instead, there will be a 'catch-all' question about whether your circumstances have changed. Well, yes, probably many things in my life have changed in the last 12 months. Do you want me to list them all?

Then there's the lack of consistency. I rang around a few insurers to find out which convictions they'd want to know about and which they'd ignore. The official line sounds quite reasonable; many minor convictions may result in higher premiums to reflect the increased risk, although convictions for more serious - or relevant - offences (such as arson if it's household insurance and dangerous driving if it's car insurance) could mean you won't be insured.

But, when you talk to brokers, a slightly different picture emerges; it seems some insurers have a 'no convictions' rule. So it doesn't matter what the conviction is for or how long ago it took place (as long as it's unspent), the insurer may refuse to cover you or - and this is where it gets worrying - declare your cover void.

The fact is that insurers have the right to decide how risky they think someone is and whether or not they want to take on that risk and, clearly, insurers can't put everything that's important in bold type. But, bearing in mind that millions of people have unspent convictions (not just a few thousand), you'd think this would be something that insurers would make sure they explain so clearly that no-one's in any doubt about what they're supposed to do. Doutbless, some people do deliberately withhold information when they take out insurance, but far more are likely to be innocent victims of rules they don't understand.