Couple of months back a mate of mine was overtaking a car on a dual carriage way. The car that was being overtaken then suddenly pulls into the right hand lane and slams on the anchors. Mate goes into the back of him.

The rear right corner of the car in front was scratched, and my mate broke his front left head light. Looking at the damage its pretty obvious that the car pulled in front of him. Initially they decided to settle it privately until the other bloke came back with silly high quotes from his 'mate’s garage' saying there was structural damage underneath. There wasn't, we took photos etc.

My mate had also logged the accident with the police station and with his insurance in case it went pear shaped.
The bloke then initially tried to claim through my mates insurance, so my mate was appointed a solicitor through his own insurance. There was nothing more heard until recently it appears that the other bloke has gone to one of these 'help hire' places to pursue the claim. This has led to my mate receiving a county court request, and the amount has gone up to just over 3k, some 2k of that for car hire

Obviously someone is on the fiddle here.

1) We don't even know if this bloke is insured. Surely if he wanted to make a claim he would just get his insurance company to do it?
2) All the information has been passed onto my mates solicitors, so far he hasn't had to do much.

The only problem is that my mates insurance is up for renewal and his insurance company have knocked his current ncb and a further 2 years off, taking him from what would be his 4th year ncb back down to 1, so now his insurance has shot back up.

Is there anything he can do? Should they have knocked his ncb even though a claim hasn't taken place yet?