Insurer subrogation in Belgium: who your insurer can pursue

Subrogation is your insurer recovering its money from the party at fault after paying you. Recourse is your insurer recovering it from you. Two neighbouring words, two opposite directions, and precise Belgian rules on who can be pursued, for how much and under what conditions. Both can be read in your policy before you sign.

Subrogation and recourse: two words, two opposite directions

The pages that rank for « subrogation assurance » are French: April, Allianz France, Luko, Lemonade. They quote Article L121-12 of the French Insurance Code, which does not apply to a Belgian policy. None of them links it to the mechanism drivers actually worry about, an insurer's recourse against its own customer.

The table puts the two notions side by side.

The first mechanism works in your favour. The second can cost you tens of thousands of euros.

What does subrogation mean in car insurance?

A substitution. Article 95 of the Insurance Act of 4 April 2014 provides that the insurer which has paid the compensation is subrogated, up to that amount, to the rights and claims of the insured against the third parties responsible for the damage. It takes your place, no more and no less.

A worked example. A driver ignores your right of way and dents your door. The quote comes to 4,200 euros. You hold omnium (the Belgian name for own-damage cover) with a 500 euro deductible, and you would rather be paid now than wait for the other insurer to accept liability. Your insurer pays you 3,700 euros, then claims those 3,700 euros from the at-fault driver's liability insurer. The remaining 500 euros are still yours to claim from the party at fault, and many insurers recover them for you in the same file. Ask.

Nothing to sign. Subrogation flows from the law.

Who can the insurer not pursue?

Your close family, as a rule. Except in cases of malice, Article 95 rules out any claim against the insured's descendants, ascendants, spouse and direct in-laws, against people living in the household, guests and domestic staff.

The logic is simple. You would probably never have sued your daughter over a dented wing, and the money would come out of the same household anyway.

One exception changes everything: the insurer may act against these people to the extent that their liability is actually covered by an insurance policy. If your son, who lives with you, reverses his own car into yours, your omnium pays, then turns to the liability insurer of your son's car. It claims nothing from him personally. To untangle roles within a household, our article on the policyholder, insured and driver sets out who is who.

Insurer recourse: the cases written into the Royal Decree of 16 April 2018

Under Belgian compulsory liability cover, the victim always gets paid. Article 151 of the 2014 Act makes deductibles, exclusions and forfeitures unenforceable against the injured party. Recourse is the counterpart of that protection: the insurer pays first, then turns to the insured where the law allows it, and only then.

Those cases are fixed by the Royal Decree of 16 April 2018, which sets the conditions of Belgian motor liability policies. I reread it article by article on 15 October 2026.

Two rows deserve a pause. The last one first: a late claim only lets the insurer recover the damage it actually suffered, and nothing at all if the step was taken as quickly as could reasonably be done. Then the licence row, the only one where the insurer does not have to prove a causal link. An expired licence is enough, even if the accident has nothing to do with the licence. The decree does provide two safety valves: no recourse when the problem is a purely administrative formality, and no recourse abroad if the driver complied with local rules. A foreign licence not exchanged in time often falls into this row.

Lending your car has its own protection. Under Article 47, the insurer cannot exercise recourse against an insured who shows that the breach is attributable to another insured and happened against their instructions or without their knowledge. You lend the car to a friend who then hands it, without telling you, to an unlicensed driver: recourse targets that driver, not you, provided you can prove it. The other risks of lending are covered in our article on lending your car.

How much can the insurer claim from you?

Article 44 works on net expenses: the compensation paid, court costs and interest, minus deductibles and sums already recovered elsewhere. Up to 11,000 euros, recourse can be in full. Above that, it equals 11,000 euros plus half of whatever exceeds 11,000 euros, and it cannot go over 31,000 euros.

Applied to an accident caused while drunk, with the causal link proven by the insurer and the driver fully at fault, the scale gives this:

• 8,000 euros of net expenses: recourse of 8,000 euros, the whole amount.
• 25,000 euros of net expenses: 11,000 plus 7,000, so 18,000 euros.
• 40,000 euros of net expenses: 11,000 plus 14,500, so 25,500 euros.
• 120,000 euros of net expenses: the formula would give 65,500 euros, and the cap brings recourse down to 31,000 euros.

The cap does not protect everyone. It disappears for a deliberate loss and for a deliberate false declaration of the risk, where the insurer can claim all of its net expenses, and a seriously injured victim can push the bill far beyond what most households could absorb without selling an asset. Recourse is also limited to the share of liability that falls personally on the insured, and any policy deductible is applied before it, under Article 49.

P&V sums up the drink-driving rule on its liability cover page: recourse is possible if the insurer manages to prove the causal link between the driver's condition and the accident. The consumer brochure published by Assuralia, the Belgian insurers' federation, presents the same mechanism.

Waiver of recourse: the signature that can cost you the payout

A waiver of recourse clause makes you promise not to claim anything from a given person if damage occurs. It slips into a leasing contract, a short-term rental, a parking subscription, an agreement with a garage, or a friendly settlement after a scrape. It looks harmless.

It is not. If, through your own act, subrogation can no longer work, Article 95 lets the insurer ask you to return the payout to the extent of the loss it suffers. You agreed not to pursue the garage that scratched your car: your omnium pays 2,000 euros, can no longer turn to the garage, and may ask you to give those 2,000 euros back.

The reflex fits in one line. Before signing a waiver, get your insurer's written consent, or check that your policy already allows it.

How to find these clauses in your general conditions

Ten minutes is enough, on the PDF your intermediary gave you. Search in turn for:

• « recours » in the liability section, to check that the policy follows the royal decree and see whether it is more generous on any point;
• « subrogation » or « subrogé » in the omnium section, for the rule that applies to your own vehicle;
• « renonce » or « renonciation », for waivers the insurer has already accepted, for instance in favour of a tenant or an occasional driver;
• « contrôle technique », to see how the policy treats a vehicle overdue for its roadworthiness test;
• « 250 », the recourse cap for an inaccurate but honest risk declaration.

Write down the article numbers. Those are what you will quote if recourse is ever notified to you. Your particular conditions prevail over the general ones in case of conflict, and false declaration and forfeiture of cover each have their own article on this site.

To compare policies on these points, the comparison tool sets guarantees side by side, the ranking of the best car insurers details what each company covers and refuses, and the quiz helps you settle the right level of cover in two minutes. Legal protection cover may pay for a dispute, depending on its scope. If recourse has already been notified to you, the question becomes procedural: our article on reporting a claim sets out the deadlines, and the Insurance Ombudsman, the free Belgian complaints service for insurance customers, examines disputes between consumers and insurers. The FSMA, Belgium's financial services and markets authority, supervises the conduct rules of insurers and intermediaries.

This site informs and compares. It is not an insurance intermediary and gives no individual recommendation: your general and particular conditions, and only they, decide.