The discount you spent five years earning is a document, and your insurer has fifteen days to hand it over
Nobody hands you the proof of your own good behaviour. You have to ask, and hardly anyone does.
Every year you drive without causing a claim, your insurer quietly moves you along a scale and your premium follows it down. That record is worth several hundred euros a year to most drivers, and yet it lives inside one company's system, invisible, until the day you want to take it somewhere else. European law changed that, and the change went almost unnoticed. The claims-history statement is now something you can demand at any time, covering at least the preceding five years, delivered within fifteen days, and since 24 July 2025 written on a template that looks the same whether it comes from Antwerp, Alicante or Aarhus. It is the piece of paper that turns "I have never claimed" into something a new insurer has to price rather than politely ignore. And it matters most at exactly the three moments people forget about it: when you switch insurer, when you move to another country, and when you go a while without a car.
What the statement actually is
In Belgium and the Netherlands you will hear it called a schadeattest, in France a relevé d'information, in Germany a Schadenfreiheitsbescheinigung. Whatever your insurer calls it, European law now fixes what it has to contain: who the policyholder is, which vehicles the contract covered, the exact dates cover started and ended, and the third-party liability claims recorded against those vehicles over at least the preceding five years. Until recently every company printed its own version in its own language and its own order, which is precisely why a driver arriving from another country so often heard that the paperwork was unreadable and the discount would have to start again from zero. That excuse ran out on 24 July 2025, when a harmonised European template took effect, so the statement a Spanish insurer issues now carries the same fields in the same places as the one an Irish insurer issues. It is one page, it is boring to read, and it is the only proof you have that the last five years happened.
Fifteen days, and you do not owe anyone a reason
The right is unconditional and it is yours to use whenever you like. You can ask your insurer for the statement at any point, during the contract or after it has ended, and it has fifteen days to hand it over. You do not have to be leaving, you do not have to explain yourself, and asking costs you nothing and signals nothing. The practical skill is sequencing. Request the statement before you start collecting quotes, not after, because a competitor waiting on paperwork while a fifteen-day clock runs is how a good offer quietly expires. Ask in writing, by email or through the customer portal rather than on the phone, so that the fifteen days are documented from a date you can point at. And ask specifically for the harmonised European claims-history statement, because if you leave the request open you will get a free-form letter that says you have been a valued customer since 2019, which is not the same document and is worth considerably less when you hand it to someone in another country.
What a foreign insurer is not allowed to do
This is the part of the law with teeth in it. An insurer must treat a claims-history statement issued in another member state as equal to one issued at home, including when it applies discounts, and it may not treat you differently or load your premium because of your nationality, or purely because of the country you used to live in. In plain terms, "we do not recognise Polish no-claims records" is not a position an insurer in the European Union is entitled to take, and neither is a surcharge that exists only because your previous address was abroad. What an insurer may still do is apply its own tariff to the facts on the page, and that distinction is where nearly every real dispute lives. The document has to be accepted, read and weighed like a domestic one. The number that comes out at the end is a commercial calculation, and a different company on the next street will produce a different number from the same sheet of paper.
The scale is national, the evidence is European
Bonus-malus systems were never harmonised and they remain genuinely different animals from one country to the next. Some markets run a numbered ladder that you climb one rung per clean year and fall several rungs down after a claim. Others fold your claims record into a much broader profile alongside age, licence age, postcode, annual mileage and the car itself, so the same five clean years move the price by a different amount depending on everything around them. Five years without a claim therefore does not convert into one fixed percentage across Europe, and an insurer that tells you it cannot simply copy your old level straight across is being accurate rather than obstructive. There is a lever here that almost nobody pulls, though. The same law obliges insurers to publish a general overview of how they use claims-history statements when calculating premiums. It is usually sitting on the website next to the policy conditions, and ten minutes with it before you commit tells you whether a company genuinely rewards a long clean record or mostly prices the postcode and the car.
Read it before somebody else prices it
Ask for the statement early enough that you still have time to argue with it. The claims listed are the ones your insurer paid or reserved under third-party liability, and errors are not rare: a claim that the other side's insurer actually settled showing up as yours, an incident you eventually withdrew still sitting on the record, a car you sold three years ago attached to the wrong dates. Each of those is worth money every year for the next five, and it is far easier to correct while you are still a paying customer than to explain to a new insurer why the document you just handed over is wrong. Read the liability coding on every entry rather than simply counting the lines, because a claim where you carried no liability and one where you carried all of it look almost identical at a glance and are priced nothing alike. If something is wrong, dispute it in writing with the claim reference and the date, and keep the reply. A total loss deserves particular care here, because the payout is a negotiation rather than a fact, and the way it eventually lands on your record outlives the cheque by years.
The two gaps that quietly erase everything
Two situations wipe out a record the law would otherwise protect, and neither is obvious until it has already happened. The first is a break in cover. Sell the car, spend a year or two without a policy, and many insurers will treat the accumulated history as stale when you come back, because the retention period is set by their own underwriting rules and not by the directive. Ask your insurer how long it will honour your record before you cancel anything, and request the statement on your way out regardless, because a document sitting in your own files does not expire on somebody else's schedule. That applies with particular force when you are selling the car privately and the policy ends the day the buyer drives off. The second gap is the named driver. If you have spent five careful years driving on a partner's or a parent's policy, that record belongs to the policyholder, not to you, and in most of Europe you will start your own first contract from scratch anyway. If that describes you, taking out a modest policy in your own name earlier than you strictly need to is one of the few pieces of insurance advice that pays for itself, because the clock only starts on the day your name is on the contract.
What to actually do
The whole exercise is one email and ten minutes of reading, and it is worth more than an afternoon on a comparison site.
Ask your current insurer in writing for the harmonised European claims-history statement. It has fifteen days, and you do not have to say why you want it.
Do it before you start collecting quotes, so no offer is expiring while you wait on paperwork.
Check the vehicle details, the exact cover dates and the liability coding on every claim listed, not just how many claims there are.
Dispute anything wrong in writing, quoting the claim reference and the date, and keep the reply.
Ask a new insurer how it converts a statement from another country before you sign, not after.
Read the insurer's published overview of how it uses claims history in pricing. European law requires that document to exist.
Request the statement before you cancel a policy, sell a car or move country, and keep your own copy on file.
If you drive as a named driver on someone else's policy, remember you are building their record and not your own.
Frequently asked questions
Does any of this apply outside the European Union?
The rules bind the member states, and the wider European Economic Area applies the same framework, so a statement from Norway, Iceland or Liechtenstein sits inside the same system. Past that point the guarantee stops. The United Kingdom left before the amended rules took effect and Switzerland was never inside them, so a British or Swiss insurer accepting your continental record is a commercial choice rather than a legal obligation. In practice a good many of them do accept a clear foreign statement, particularly one on the European template, but ask the question and get the answer before you cancel anything. The caution runs in both directions: bringing a British no-claims letter into the European Union usually works, but it works because the insurer chooses to let it work, so leave yourself time to shop around if the first one says no.
My new insurer says my old discount does not transfer. Is it allowed to say that?
Partly, and the distinction is worth getting right before you argue. It cannot refuse to read a statement from another member state, treat it as worth less than a domestic one, or load your premium because of your nationality or simply because of where you lived before. What it can do is apply its own scale, and since bonus-malus ladders were never harmonised, the level you held elsewhere may have no exact equivalent. The honest test is whether the insurer engaged with the document at all. "We have read it and our scale places you here" is legitimate. "We do not accept foreign statements" is not. If you hear the second version, ask for it in writing, point at the general overview the company is obliged to publish, and if that leads nowhere, your national insurance ombudsman or financial supervisory authority is the next step and it costs nothing to use.
Will a crash that was not my fault show up on my statement?
It can, and that catches people out. The statement records third-party liability claims involving the vehicles on the policy, so an incident where liability was shared, disputed or unclear at first may well be listed even though you did not cause it. What matters is how the entry is coded, because a claim showing no liability on your side should not be priced like one where you were entirely at fault. Read that field carefully and ask your insurer to correct it if the coding does not match how the claim was finally settled. It is also the best argument for thinking harder about whether to claim at all on a small incident: a modest repair paid out of your own pocket leaves no trace anywhere, while exactly the same repair put through the policy travels with you for five years and gets read by every insurer you approach.
I am moving to another country. When should I ask for it?
Before you cancel anything, and ideally before you even give notice. Once the policy is closed you become a former customer chasing paperwork from abroad, often in a language you no longer use daily, and fifteen days feels a great deal longer from the other side of a border. Ask while the contract is still live, save the file somewhere you will find it, and print a copy for the folder that holds the registration documents. Then ask the insurer in your new country, before you sign, exactly what it will do with the statement, because the answer varies enormously between companies inside the same market. Arriving with two or three quotes already based on your real history is the whole difference between starting with five clean years behind you and starting as a brand new driver at forty.
How long does my clean record survive if I stop driving for a while?
That one depends on the insurer rather than on European law, which sets no retention period at all. Practice ranges from a couple of years to considerably longer, and some companies distinguish between a short gap between cars and a genuine break from driving. Since nobody volunteers the rule, ask it directly before you cancel: how long will you honour this record if I come back. Whatever the answer, request the statement on your way out and keep it, because the document remains proof of what happened between those dates no matter what the company's archive does later, and an insurer that does not have to reconstruct your history from its own systems has one fewer reason to say no.
