If I missed a premium payment and had a claim, am I covered?

Question

José Manuel Alburquerque · Accepted Answer

It depends on which premium payment it is. If it is the first premium and it had not been paid through your fault when the insured event occurred, as a general rule you are not covered. If it is a later premium, the insurance continues to cover you during the month after it falls due and then cover is suspended. If you pay before the contract comes to an end, cover resumes 24 hours after the day of payment. Not paying is not the same as cancelling the policy. The first premium If it was not paid through the policyholder's fault, the insurer can terminate the contract or claim the premium. If the insured event occurs before it is paid, the insurer does not pay, unless the policy says otherwise. The law requires the non-payment to be the policyholder's fault. If the premium was set up to be collected by direct debit and the insurer did not collect it, or tried to collect it from a different account, there are good arguments for demanding cover. Subsequent premiums During the month after the due date, the insurance provides cover even though the premium is unpaid. From then on, cover is suspended. If you pay, cover resumes 24 hours after the day of payment. If the insurer does not claim payment within six months of the due date, the contract comes to an end. While the contract is suspended, the insurer can only claim from you the premium for the current period. Here too, if the premium was set up to be collected by direct debit and the insurer did not collect it, there are arguments for demanding cover. Special cases In compulsory motor insurance, the insurer cannot remove the vehicle from the Spanish database of insured vehicles until the contract has come to an end. If you cause an accident without cover, the victims will be paid by the insurer or by the “Consorcio de Compensación de Seguros”, Spain's state insurance compensation fund, but the insurer or the Consorcio will then claim back from you what it has paid. In life insurance, once the period set by the policy, which cannot exceed two years, has passed, non-payment does not suspend the insurance but reduces it in line with the table of values in the policy. In term life insurance, such as policies taken out with a mortgage, that table often gives no value at all and non-payment can leave you without cover. If the illness causing a disability showed itself to be irreversible while the insurance was in force, the “Tribunal Supremo”, Spain's Supreme Court, has accepted that later non-payment does not release the insurer, even if the “Seguridad Social”, the Spanish social security system, declares the disability afterwards. Even so, do not stop paying because you are ill.