Car insurance for people with criminal convictions

Disclosing unspent convictions

Insurers will ask you to disclose your criminal convictions to work out if you can be covered.

You must declare any unspent convictions you have.

Unspent convictions are in place for a set period. They can be short, last years or be indefinite.

If you get a conviction during your cover, you don’t have to let your insurer know until you renew, unless it states otherwise in your policy.

If you don’t disclose your unspent convictions when asked, your insurance will be invalid. Insurers can even get their money back from you if you’ve made a claim with them.

Final warnings, cautions and reprimands aren’t convictions, so they don’t need to be disclosed.

Don’t disclose spent convictions

After a certain amount of time, depending on the severity of the crime, your conviction will become spent.

You don’t need to tell your insurer about spent convictions, even if you’re asked.

Under the Rehabilitation of Offenders Act 1974, spent convictions can’t count against you anymore.

Named drivers criminal convictions

If someone else needs to regularly drive your car, like a friend or relative, then you can add them to your car insurance as a named driver.

As your policy will cover another driver, you’ll need to give the insurer their details too, which includes disclosing any criminal convictions they have.

The convictions of named drivers can affect the price of car insurance whether the main driver has convictions or not.

Don’t try and save money by listing someone without convictions as the main driver, when a driver with convictions will mostly be driving the car – this is called fronting. It’s illegal and a form of fraud.