Mulsanne Insurance Company Limited · DRN-6230192

The complaint Mr H and Miss J have complained that Mulsanne Insurance Company Limited unreasonably refused to accept and pay their claim on their motor policy following the theft of their car. Given Miss J has been the primary correspondent with us throughout, I shall just refer to her for ease of reference. References to Mulsanne include all its agents. What happened Miss J attended a house party and parked her car there intending to pick it up again the following morning. When she went to pick it up she saw that it was stolen. A short time later the police informed her they had found her car. It had been crashed into some traffic lights by the thieves and damaged. So the police recovered the car. Miss J made a claim to Mulsanne. It decided her car was a total loss and was just about to pay her the market value of her car, when it realised that a policy condition hadn’t been met. When Miss J applied to buy her policy, she was asked to confirm her car had a tracker. She confirmed it did. However her car didn’t have a tracker. Mulsanne said that if she had answered no to that question it wouldn’t have provided a policy to her. So on that basis it refused to accept her claim and eventually gave the car back to Miss J. Miss J raised a separate complaint as she didn’t think the tracker issue was highlighted. That complaint was dealt with separately and not upheld and it’s now closed. So that means the tracker question was legitimately highlighted and Miss J answered the question concerning it incorrectly. And Miss J brought this complaint to us too. The investigator was of the view that given the particulars of this complaint, the tracker was immaterial to the loss. Therefore she thought that Mulsanne should reconsider the claim without reference to the tracker endorsement, and if it paid the claim, it should add interest from the date the original total loss settlement was raised and to pay her £300 compensation. Mulsanne didn’t agree so Miss J’s complaint has been passed to me to decide. What I’ve decided – and why I’ve considered all the available evidence and arguments to decide what’s fair and reasonable in the circumstances of this complaint. Having done so, I’m upholding this complaint along the same lines as the investigator, save that it’s not possible to request Mulsanne to pay interest on a claim they now need to

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reconsider, as the investigator has since communicated to both parties. I’ll now explain why I’ve come to my decision. First, as the complaint over whether or not the question concerning the tracker was highlighted or not is now closed, I’m not considering that issue here in this decision, other than there remains to be no dispute that Miss J’s car didn’t have a tracker fitted to it. There is also no dispute that as Miss J was attending a party she parked her car at this residential house and when she returned the next day to get the car, it was gone. The police phoned Miss J just after midday that same day to tell her that her car had been found, having been stolen and crashed. Apparently the car crashed into some traffic lights at 12.42am. I agree with the investigator that the tracker would have only been useful at the precise time the car was stolen. And the fact it was stolen wasn’t known until the next morning. So I don’t consider that not having a tracker made any difference to this theft. First the car was anyway found which is the major purpose of the tracker in any event. Secondly it appears the crash happened fairly quickly after the car was stolen given the time of the traffic lights breakdown. I don’t consider it’s that likely on balance that Miss J would have been aware of any tracker notification at that time of night in order to stop the theft. She would have had to call the police and the police would have to have agreed to investigate right away and then try and find the thieves and by that stage the accident might well have happened in any event. There would have been no guarantee the police would have been in a position to attend right away either. So the purpose of the tracker in the particular circumstances of this theft is extremely unlikely to have made any difference to the car damage or indeed the traffic lights damage. So on that basis I don’t consider Mulsanne has shown that the failure of Miss J having a tracker on her car was material to the loss incurred namely the damage to Miss J’s car and the damage to the traffic lights. So it follows that it’s not fair and reasonable to rely on this policy endorsement to decline a claim in this way, which on the balance of probabilities has little or no bearing on the circumstances of that claim, as that’s taking an unreasonable advantage. As the investigator explained, the rules under which this service operates namely DISP 3.6.1 do permit us to consider if the insurer has fairly and reasonably relied on the policy terms or endorsements, taking into account the specific circumstances of the complaint. Each complaint is of course considered on its own merits. So just because I consider this is the right approach in this complaint wouldn’t necessarily mean I would consider this the right approach in another vehicle theft complaint – it would solely depend on the specific circumstances in that other complaint. Therefore it remains that I consider Mulsanne should reconsider this claim under the remaining terms and conditions of the policy without any reliance on the endorsement concerning the need for a tracker to have been fitted. Mulsanne had decided that Miss J’s car was a total loss given the damage sustained in the crash at the hands of the thieves. It had also agreed with Miss J that it was going to pay her the market value of her car as insured by this policy. It had also ensured Miss J had given back the hire car that it had provided for her too. And then at that stage it raised the issue of the lack of the tracker. It was quite late in the process for Mulsanne to raise this which in turned caused Miss J further unnecessary distress and upset. Miss J was dealing with severe family ill health issues at this time, so this issue had quite a significant impact on Miss J.

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Further Miss J needed to get her personal belongings from the car at the time when it was thought the car would be sent to salvage and she had to make several requests for this which caused yet further upset. Therefore I agree that Mulsanne should pay some compensation to Miss J. I consider the amount of £300 as suggested by the investigator to be fair and reasonable here. It’s also in line with our approach to compensation more fully detailed on our website. I agree with the investigator on the stance taken over the costs Miss J has incurred in trying to repair her car by buying some parts for her car. Initially she contacted us to ask would it make a difference if she sold the car but she didn’t contact us to discuss the costs she was incurring in trying to repair her car. Like the investigator I’m not seeing these costs were an effort to mitigate her loss so that she had a driveable car again. Further she has no evidence of the payment she had to pay to get the car repaired enough to be transported as she paid cash for that and has no receipt. Therefore here, I don’t consider Mulsanne needs to refund any of these costs to Miss J. My final decision So, for these reasons, it’s my final decision that I uphold this complaint. I now require Mulsanne Insurance Company Limited to do the following: • Reconsider the claim without reliance on the vehicle security endorsement and in line with the remaining terms and conditions of the policy. • Pay Mr H and Miss J the sum of £300 compensation for the trouble and upset it caused. Under the rules of the Financial Ombudsman Service, I’m required to ask Mr H and Miss J to accept or reject my decision before 28 April 2026. Rona Doyle Ombudsman

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