All UK car insurance companies are required to submit policy data to a central database called the Motor Insurance Database (MID), operated by an organisation called The Motor Insurers’ Bureau (MIB). This information can be used by the DVLA, the Police and other insurance companies. It is your right to access the data held about you on the database.
1. Check If Your Vehicle is Insured
You can do an instant check to see if your vehicle is listed on the MID database with a valid insurance policy. Just enter your registration plate number and the system will let you know if it finds a record together with a valid insurance policy and the vehicle details.
2. Check Your Car Insurance History
The database contains information on your current policy which may be helpful if you have lost your insurance certificate and don't know who your insurer is. It also retains policy information from the last 7 years so you can see who your previous insurer was.
It is also possible to request insurance details for another person as long as you've been given their written consent. You can also request policy information for a deceased person in order to inform the insurer about the death of a policyholder.
3. Check Your Car Insurance Claims History on CUE
The MIB operate a current and historical national claims database called the Claims and Underwriting Exchange (CUE). This database contains details of all motor, home, personal injury and industrial injury claims and keeps that data for 6 years from the date the claim was closed.
All insurers submit their claims information to the CUE database on a regular basis. It can be accessed by other insurance companies for the purpose of cross-checking details on claims or individual policyholders.
It is a legal requirement for you to disclose previous claims to a new insurer if requested to do so. However, if you believe that an insurance company has incorrectly registered a claim against you then you can request to see what details CUE has about your claims history. If you then think the information is wrong, you will need to request the specific insurer to correct it and remove or change the data it has submitted to CUE.
4. Check Your No Claims Bonus / Discount Entitlement
Many insurance companies now have the option to submit policyholder details of No Claims Bonus entitlement to the central database. This enables companies who send bonus information to quickly check your bonus entitlement years either during the quote or shortly afterwards.
A central NCD database cuts down the requirement for people to send in paperwork and enables insurers to quickly verify that a person does in fact have the stated No Claims Bonus / Discount.
You can request to see what No Claims Discount information is held about you on the database. However, your insurer/previous insurer may not be currently submitting this optional information at the moment.
You can also request to see your current No Claims Bonus years directly from the insurer and it usually appears on their renewal letter to you.
5. Check Stolen or Written-Off Cars on MIAFTR
The Motor Insurers Anti-Fraud and Theft Register (MIAFTR) central database contains information on vehicles that have been stolen or written off. It can be used by the DVLA, the Police, HPI and Experian to detect cases of fraud, stolen vehicles and to help protect buyers from purchasing a car that has previously been written-off.
If you've had a car insurance claim for a stolen vehicle or resulted in it being written-off, then you can request to see what data is held about that vehicle. Additional identity checks are required if you are looking to check a vehicle that you did not own at the time of the claim.
6. Check Tax and MOT Status on the DVLA
In addition to checking the MID database, you can also view the current status of any car or vehicle on the DVLA website. Simply enter a number plate and it will show:
- MOT status and expiry date
- Tax status and expiry date
- Vehicle Make
- Date of first registration
- Year of manufacture
- Cylinder Capacity
- Fuel Type
- Vehicle Colour
- Vehicle Type Category e.g. M1
- Wheelplan
- Date of last V5C (logbook) issued
