Bones wrote:If the car is registered in his Dog's name, won't that also invalidate Jimmy's insurance.
Most insurers ask that the policy holder is also the registered keeper, but that's down to the discretion of the insurance company. The actual requirement is that the policy holder has an "insurable interest" in the thing that's being insured. That's a bit of a vague term, but it basically means that they'll suffer some sort of loss if something happens to it - the idea is to stop people insuring random things (like the lives of famous people) as a method of gambling, while still allowing, for example, a company to take out life insurance on an important member of staff (the business will suffer if they pop their clogs).
Bones wrote:Don't quote me but I thought if you even had 3rd party drive any car cover, the you are driving car had to still be insured by the registered owner. This is to stop people insuring a fiesta and then driving a ferrari
longdog wrote:I think most policies say "any vehicle not belonging to the policy holder" which, given that any property legally owned by a dog belongs to the owner, would put the kybosh on that approach.
This is a separate, and confusing, thing. The UK puts an additional burden on car insurers to deal with third party claims against their insured drivers, even if they're not driving the car that's insured. The law lets the insurer claim back any payout they are forced to make in this manner from their customer but this is usually a waste of time, so most insurers offer cover for third party risks when driving other cars as a part of the policy (making a feature out of a requirement). To avoid the insure-a-fiesta-drive-a-ferrari problem they put various restrictions in place, typical ones are that the not-on-the-policy car MUST NOT be owned by the policy holder, and that the actual owner MUST have a separate policy for it elsewhere. It's definitely one to read the policy conditions carefully on and not make any assumptions about.
Edit: Actually, it may be a Motor Insurers Bureaux requirement rather than UK law.
In the case of jimmywx11, not being the registered keeper doesn't prevent him from getting insured, but it may break the policy conditions. If he tells the insurance company that he's not the registered keeper they will probably want to know who is and why he's insuring the vehicle. Given who he's registered the car to, I suspect some insurance companies would choose not to insure the car. If he can persuade a company to insure him - either without having to declare who the registered keeper is, or by declaring it honestly and having them accept this - then there's no intrinsic reason the insurance would be invalid.