At-fault claim in Belgium: €535 of malus over five years

On the site's reference profile, an at-fault claim costs €535 of extra premium over the five renewals that follow, and €808 if you count the climb back to the floor. But the figure moves a lot: €187 for a driver at degree 0, €845 at degree 14.

The repair is therefore not the real cost. The trajectory of the premium is.

An at-fault claim costs €535 of premium over five years

The mechanism rests on two rules, taken from the Selectra and HelloSafe pages consulted on 21 October 2026: a claim in fault or in shared fault adds five degrees, and each year without an at-fault claim removes just one. There has been no single scale since 1 January 2004, but this 23-degree grid remains the common benchmark. Under the bonus-malus system, your degree is the multiplier applied to a base premium, which is why it moves your bill.

Here is the calculation, degree by degree. The reference profile: a 35-year-old driver, Volkswagen Golf 1.5 TSI, Flemish Brabant, no claim for five years, third-party liability premium of €353 a year (Mon-Assurance-Auto, surveyed on 26 January 2026). Working assumption: this driver sits at degree 6, or 66 % of the base premium, which is then €535. He causes an at-fault accident just before his renewal.

On the day of the accident, the bill is zero. It arrives at renewal, then comes back four more times.

Why does the same accident cost €187 for one driver and €845 for another?

Because the scale is not linear. At the bottom of the grid a degree weighs one to three percentage points; in the middle, four to five; near the top, six, ten, twenty, then forty points between degree 21 and degree 22. Five notches added to a driver on the floor cost little, five notches added to a driver already in the middle cost a lot, and the same addition at the top of the scale becomes ruinous.

Same €535 base, same claim, six different drivers:

A top bonus therefore does not only protect your premium: it makes the accident cheaper. And one detail competing pages never put a number on: at degree 0, the driver with no accident cannot descend any further, the comparison path stays flat at €267.42, and the gap closes faster.

After year five, the malus is still running

Five years is the length of history recorded in the claims history certificate, which you can also download from Carattest. It is not the length of the malus.

The driver who stayed accident-free reaches the floor in year six. The one who had the accident is then at degree 6 and still has six notches to descend. He pays 16 percentage points more in year 6, then 13, 10, 7, 4 and 1, which adds €272.77 to the €534.85 already counted.

The full cost of the accident therefore reaches €807.62 over eleven years, for damage to the other party that the insurer settled without you taking a euro out of your pocket.

Should you repay the insurer rather than take the malus?

For small damage, sometimes yes. Test-Achats describes the possibility: the driver repays the insurer himself, and the claim is not recorded. It depends entirely on your contract, it never covers bodily injury, and it assumes you have not waited. Our guide on reporting a claim or paying out of pocket covers the decision on your own damage; here, we look at the liability side.

The practical threshold therefore sits between €535 and €808, depending on the horizon you choose. It shifts with your degree: with an €845 malus (degree 14), repaying €700 of damage is easy to justify, whereas at degree 0, at €187, the question almost never arises.

Joker, ceiling, shared fault: each insurer has its own scale

The objection is a serious one, and it has to be made. This whole calculation rests on a published grid, whereas since 2004 each company sets its own.

A few differences recorded on HelloSafe on 21 October 2026, to be taken as indications to confirm in your general conditions. The page itself contains inconsistencies, notably on the degree 0 percentage at Ethias (45, 50 or 54 % depending on the passage).

If the 35-year-old has reached degree 0, he meets the conditions of the Ethias joker. For him, the right question is no longer "what does the accident cost" but "does my contract have a joker, and which one". A €347 gap at the ceiling between Partners (€824) and Ethias (€1,171), on an equal base, shows that comparing scales matters as much as comparing premiums. Our guide to the claims history certificate shows how personalisation varies by company.

What if the omnium follows the same scale?

Some insurers apply a comparable scale to the material-damage part of the omnium, Test-Achats notes. In that case the accident costs more, but nobody publishes the exact coefficient.

A working assumption, to be read as an upper bound: if the reference omnium (€1,135, Mon-Assurance-Auto, surveyed on 26 January 2026) follows the same coefficients as the €353 liability premium, the malus applies to €1,488 of premiums instead of €353, which is 4.2 times more. The five-year surcharge would then reach €2,255 (534.85 × 1,488 / 353) instead of €535. That is a theoretical ceiling, not a forecast.

Five mistakes that distort the real cost of a claim

The list below gathers the most frequent calculation traps, the ones that make people underestimate or overestimate the malus.

• Counting the repair bill. The other party's cost is settled by the insurer; what you pay is the premium.
• Forgetting that the bonus stops at the floor. At 0, the claim-free driver goes no lower, which changes the lost-saving calculation.
• Using another insurer's scale. Degree 22 is worth 154 %, 200 % or 219 % of the premium depending on the company.
• Treating shared fault as half a fault. According to Selectra, it raises the degree like a full fault.
• Stopping the count at five years. With €272.77 of surcharge beyond that, the last third of the cost plays out after the certificate's horizon.

Method, reference profile and sources

The site's reference profile: a 35-year-old driver, Volkswagen Golf 1.5 TSI, Flemish Brabant, no claim for five years, about 15,000 km a year. Third-party liability premium of €353 a year and full omnium of €1,135 a year: Mon-Assurance-Auto grids (published by Yago S.A., broker licensed by the FSMA, the Belgian financial services and markets authority, no. 114863), surveyed on 26 January 2026, reused as they stand for consistency with the site's other articles.

The 23-degree scale (degree 0 at 50 %, degree 11 at 85 %, degree 14 at 100 %, degree 22 at 200 %) and the plus five / minus one rules come from Selectra and HelloSafe, pages consulted on 21 October 2026. Our general bonus-malus guide cites another reading, with the 100 % base at degree 11; other pages put degree 0 at 54 %. Sources disagree on this point. The calculation above uses the grid published degree by degree, the only one usable year by year, and the gaps it produces are best read as orders of magnitude.

The assumption of degree 6 for the reference driver is a calculation choice, as is applying a coefficient to the €535 base. The calculation mechanics are my own; the joker and scale rules specific to Ethias, Belfius, Partners and Fédérale Assurance are those published by HelloSafe, to be confirmed in your general conditions. For the general framework, see Test-Achats, Wikifin (the FSMA's financial education arm), the FPS Economy page on bonus-malus and the law of 4 April 2014 on insurance. The certificate can be downloaded from Carattest.

This site compares and calculates. It does not sell insurance, is not an intermediary within the meaning of the law of 4 April 2014 and gives no individual recommendation. For personal advice, speak to your insurer or a broker licensed by the FSMA. In a dispute over how a claim was classified, the Insurance Ombudsman has jurisdiction; if the responsible party is uninsured, the Fonds commun de garantie steps in, and if no insurer will take you, the Bureau de Tarification is your legal fallback. No link on this page is affiliated.

In short

An at-fault claim is paid for in premium, not in repairs: €535 over five years at degree 6, between €187 and €845 depending on your starting point, €808 when you count the full climb back. Before declaring a small piece of damage, set it against these figures, and check whether your contract offers a joker. For your own numbers, run a premium simulation, line up offers in the comparison tool and see the ranking of the best car insurers. Other levers are in our guide to lowering your premium, and shared fault has its own article.