An insurer's file moves through support organisations you never named and stays about six years by default, held as long as the insurer determines a need. The no-sale promise is pinned to a definition of selling that permits a lot of sharing.
Special-category health data across an industry that shares. Keep the record.
Claims and underwriting files are kept for years for regulatory and fraud reasons.
A policy requires identity and often health or driving history.
Industry profile reviewed 23 August 2026. Also machine-readable via the free API.
A claims file can hold health details, and shared industry databases mean one leak reaches insurers you never applied to. A diagnosis or a refused claim on that record can shape what you are offered for years.
You're quoted on files you have never seen
Your file is built partly from records you never handed over: insurers commonly buy claims histories, credit data and, on motor cover, your driving record before they quote you. It moves both ways, because what happens next goes into shared industry databases other insurers consult. Cover bought for your work is assembled the same way, on your trade and your claims record rather than your car.
Kept about six years, by default
Keeping your whole file for about six years after you leave is the norm, with reasons stacked so one always applies. The clock is not your policy but how long a claim could still be brought, so a file outlasts the cover it belongs to. On motor cover, driving data from your car and the quotes you asked for feed the models that set prices, by default rather than by consent.
The no-sale promise is pinned to a definition
Insurers commonly say they neither sell nor share your information, then attach the statutes' own definitions to both words. Passing your file to vendors, affiliates, credit agencies and shared fraud databases sits outside the promise. One large insurer skips the hedge and publishes what it does sell: identifiers, browsing activity and employment details, for advertising.
Worked out from the industry, not from any one company. What you actually handed over is yours to record.
Which of those a company actually holds is the one thing the cover decides: on life or health cover the underwriting file is a medical file, and on motor cover the question asked is your driving convictions.
Built only from what this kind of service actually collects. A dimension that the data does not support is not listed.
Health and medical history drive underwriting.
Assets and history set what you can insure.
Two kinds of hold. LAW SETS IT: a statute makes them keep it. THEY SET IT: a ground the company grants itself.
Financial regulators require advice, suitability, and transaction records.
To flag suspected fraud, often on a shared industry database you cannot reach through the company.
Money-laundering rules require ID and transaction records after an account closes.
Tax and company law makes them keep billing and payment records.
They can keep records to defend a live or possible legal claim.
How you drive has a proven paid market. Carmakers sold driving records to risk-scoring firms, who packaged them into reports insurers used to set prices, until a regulator stopped it. Claims and application data flow into shared databases by design.
Risk data is shared across insurers and with brokers.
Claims and risk data train pricing and fraud models.
Anonymised is their word. Health-linked records re-identify the way the first study proved: a researcher matched a US governor's anonymous hospital record to him using postcode, date of birth, and sex (Sweeney, 2000).
Fifteen demographic attributes re-identify 99.98% of Americans in a released dataset (Rocher, Hendrickx and de Montjoye, Nature Communications, 2019); date of birth, postcode, and sex alone did it for most people in the first study of the problem (Sweeney, 2000).
Four time-and-place points single out 95% of people in mobility data (de Montjoye et al., Scientific Reports, 2013).
Four card transactions identify 90% of people in payment data (de Montjoye et al., Science, 2015).
THE STUDIES Estimating the success of re-identifications in incomplete datasets using generative models (Nature Communications 10, 3069, 2019)·Simple Demographics Often Identify People Uniquely (Carnegie Mellon University, Data Privacy Working Paper 3, 2000)·Unique in the Crowd: The privacy bounds of human mobility (Scientific Reports 3, 1376, 2013)·Unique in the shopping mall: On the reidentifiability of credit card metadata (Science 347 (6221), 2015)
Clauses that recur across this industry, and what each one actually permits.
“to provide and improve our services”
The catch-all purpose. Analytics, profiling, personalisation, and increasingly AI training can all ride under it. When they want to do something new with your data, this sentence usually already covers it.
THE MOVE An objection draws the line: use your data to run the service, not to improve, target, or train on it.
“we do not sell your personal information”
Often technically true, and still misleading. It usually means no cash changes hands. Data can still flow to ad networks, analytics firms, and partners: on their definition, sharing is not selling.
THE MOVE Flip the do-not-sell switch where one exists. The written objection on top of it goes on your record.
“service providers, partners, and affiliates”
How data leaves the building with no name attached. Recipients are listed by what they do, never who they are. You cannot send a request to a company you cannot name, which is the point.
THE MOVE An access request can ask for the recipients by name, not just the categories. UK and EU law put that choice with you. The reply, or the silence, goes on your record.
“aggregated or de-identified information”
Stripping the name does not strip the pattern, and the pattern often still points at you. Policies grant themselves free, indefinite use of this data because in their telling it is no longer about you.
THE MOVE If a deletion comes back as 'anonymised', keep the reply. It is their claim, not a fact you can check.
“retained as long as necessary, or as required by law”
They can keep it for: legal duties, tax rules, fraud prevention, possible lawsuits, their own business reasons. None of them carries a firm end date. Deletion becomes a negotiation, not an event.
THE MOVE Which reasons apply to you, and how long each runs, is a request of its own. Their reply goes on your record.
“you grant us a licence to use your content”
A contract term, not a data setting, so a privacy request cannot undo it. The careful version ends with your account. The broad version can be passed on, never expires, and survives deletion.
THE MOVE Whether the licence ends with the account is written in their terms, not yours. Closing the account goes on your record.
“with insurance-support organizations that detect and prevent fraud”
Your claims and application details go into shared industry databases other insurers check. A flag there follows your quotes everywhere.
THE MOVE Those databases answer for your data too. Once a reply names them, the same requests work on them.
“persons or organizations that we have determined need the information to perform an insurance function”
Your file can go to almost any vendor or organisation the insurer picks; an insurance function stretches across marketing, analytics and audit.
THE MOVE An access request turns their discretion into a list: who actually received your file. Names can be asked for, not just categories.
“we do not and will not sell or share your personal information, as those terms are defined under data protection laws”
Both words are read as the statutes define them, not as you would. Disclosures to service providers, affiliates, credit reporting agencies and industry fraud databases carry on underneath the promise.
THE MOVE An access request asks which disclosures actually happened, whatever they are called. Their reply goes on your record.
Their own policy is the one that binds them. Pin it down with a request, and keep the reply. Start your record →