When a person sends a licence in to have it checked by an insurance company, do they compare it with licence details on their system, or do they not have licence details on their system?

Curious.

Insurers have access to The Central Underwriting Exchange Database. It will tell them about any claims you have had with previous insurers, any convictions you have disclosed to previous insurers and any insurance fraud you or anyone in your household has committed. At present, we cannot access your driving licence details on that database. There are proposals for it to show this information, but the Data Protection Act is currently impeding any progress on that front.

However, although insurers cannot currently access your licence, they can ask you to send a copy of it at any time and if you do not comply, they can void your insurance for non co-operation. If they do see anything on there which hasn't been disclosed, they can void the insurance.

We also often get phone calls from the police when they have stopped motorists at the road side. They will do a spot check to see if they have disclosed convictions to us, and if they haven't, the police will then ask us if we would honour cover. If we choose to void the insurance, the police will seize the car at the road side, and could technically charge them with obtaining insurance by deception.

A small percentage of people who fail to disclose convictions are lucky that they never have a claim and have never been asked to provide a copy of their licence, but the majority of people get caught, and once you attempt to defraud one insurer, you will find that the other insurers will all know about it and will be reluctant to take you on.

As Ninco points out the insurance companies are quite crafty. Same as any insurance really they`ll accept your custom but as soon as theres a claim they will do there damned hardest to NOT pay out. They will accept your custom if you tell them your CLEAN even if they know you have several convictions cos its FREE money in a sense cos they will never have to pay out as you have obtained that insurance illegally by not declaring your convictions. I wouldnt risk it cos if you were to even get a producer from a police officer your insurance documents wouldnt match up to your licence & they`ll just crush the car & i would imagine you`d be done for no insurance which is 11 points on ya license if im not mistaken. Vicious circle but best way is to just pay the high premium in the 1st place as it soon comes down after 2 or 3 years.

Motor insurance companies have access to the D.V.L.A. database. They will check your licence details against that.

Insurance companies can see tickets such.
They can get accident records too.
They subscribe to sources of data, like this one.

http://www.tracview.com/how-it-works.cfm

A few tickets don't matter, but accidents and speeding 15 mph over the limit or more does.

If you don't tell them they will notify you about a change of rate when they find out, or they will send a notice of cancellation.