Terms & Conditions

About Coversure Insurance Services 

At Coversure we pride ourselves in providing high quality insurance products. We are a nationwide group of independent intermediaries. Each Coversure office is operated under a franchise agreement and we are authorised and regulated by the Financial Services Authority (FSA). The FSA is the independent watchdog that regulates financial services.

Services We Provide

In arranging insurance for our clients we act as an intermediary and will advise and make a recommendation for you after we have assessed your needs, arrange cover with insurers in accordance with your requirements and help you with ongoing changes. We act as your agent (except to the extent that insurers have given us permission to incept cover and issue documents on their behalf) and can offer a wide range of insurance products from leading insurers in the market place.

We will also assist you with any claim you may incur and in order to provide a full ‘one-stop’ service, we require customers taking out Motor Vehicle insurance to also take out a supplementary Legal Expenses policy. This will give you access not only to our exclusive Claimsline service but also to legal representation for pursuing losses which may not be covered by your policy. The cost of this additional insurance will be included in the price quoted to you for the Motor Vehicle insurance and shown separately in your documentation.

Completion of Proposal Forms / Statements of Insurance

In order that you have adequate protection it is your responsibility to provide us with complete and accurate information when you take out your insurance policy as well as advise any changes in your circumstances during the period of cover. For example you may move house or change your car. Some changes may reduce your premiums.

It is important that we draw your attention to the declaration and signature section on insurers’ proposal forms and Statements of Insurance as any failure to disclose facts material to the insurance, and any inaccuracies in your answers could invalidate the cover and could mean that part or all of a claim may not be paid.

Complaints

If you have any cause for complaint please contact the company’s Managing Director at the address shown below.

We will acknowledge your complaint promptly in writing and do our best to resolve the problem quickly, keeping you informed of progress and the measures being taken. In the unlikely event that we have not resolved the complaint within 8 weeks we will write again to explain the reasons and advise when we expect to be able to do so. We will also provide you with information about the Financial Ombudsman Service. A full version of our complaints handling procedures is available on request.

Administration Charges

In addition to the premiums charged by insurers we normally make charges to cover the administration of your insurance. Any charges for New Business and Renewals will be advised to you in advance and confirmed in writing in our Statement of Price. Our normal charges for other transactions are:

Mid term Adjustments / Cancellations: Up to £250
Duplicate Certificates: £15
Green Cards: £15
Credit Plan arrangement Fee: £30
Credit Card Payments: 2.5% of price quoted

Late Payments / Bounced Cheques / Direct Debit Defaults: £10

Any likely variation from these charges will be advised to you when you take out or renew your insurance.

If you cancel a policy mid-term we may also make a charge equal to the amount lost to us in commissions reclaimed by insurers. This will also apply to mid term adjustments which result in a premium refund. If you cancel a policy within a 14 day ‘cooling-off’ period we may make a charge of up to £100 sufficient to cover our reasonable costs. It is not our practice to make refunds of amounts less than £10.

Commission

We are usually remunerated by commission from the Insurance providers. You are entitled to ask for details of such commissions and we will be pleased to provide this information on request.

Instalment Plans

We offer various long term instalment plans (re-payable over 9 – 12 months) via Insurers and/or Third Party Finance Companies. In these circumstances the charges and other details will be advised to you separately in accordance with the Consumer Credit Act regulations.

We only offer Third Party Premium Financing via Close Premium Finance (Close Brothers Ltd)

Shorter term instalment arrangements may also be available. Please enquire for details.

N.B. It is a term of any instalment arrangement that you authorise us as your agent to instruct the Insurer(s) to cancel your insurance if any payment under those arrangements is in arrears and/or not paid on time.

Holding of Monies

Monies which you pay to us or which we need to refund to you will be held for your protection in a statutory trust fund account in accordance with FSA rules. Any interest earned on this money will be retained by us but is expected to be minimal. We may transfer money to another person such as another broker for the purposes of effecting a transaction on your behalf through that person.

Telephone call recording

For training and security reasons, all of our telephone calls may be recorded.

Are we covered by the Financial Services Compensation Scheme?

We are covered by the Financial Services Compensation Scheme (FSCS) and therefore you may be entitled to compensation from the scheme if we cannot meet our obligations. This depends on the type of business and the circumstances of the claim.

Insurance advising and arranging is covered for 100% of the first £2,000 and 90% of the remainder of the claim, without any upper limit.

For compulsory classes of insurance, insurance advising and arranging is covered for 100% of the claim, without any upper limit.

Further information about compensation scheme arrangements is available from the FSCS.

Data Protection Notice

Please read this notice as it explains the purposes for which we will use your personal data. It also explains the extent to which we may share this data with other parties and the checks which we may need to carry out in the process of providing you with our services.

If you give us information about another person, in doing so you confirm that they have given you permission to provide it to us and that we may use their personal data in the same way as your own as set out in this notice.

Your Personal Data

We recognise our responsibility to treat the information we obtain about you with care. We will use personal information about you to:

1. a)     Provide you with a quote from Insurers; and
2. b)    Administer your policy if you buy one through us.

Some of the personal information we ask you to provide may be sensitive as defined in the Data Protection Act 1998. For example, you may have to give us information about medical history, criminal convictions or driving offences. If you take out an insurance policy through us we will treat you as having given consent for us to use any sensitive personal data in connection with the administration of your policy.

As part of the process of providing you with a quote and arranging insurance, the personal information which you provide will be shared with insurers and other insurance providers. If you take out a policy, the insurers’ documentation will explain their own Data Protection policies.

Marketing

We would like to contact you from time to time by post, telephone, email or other electronic means to inform you of other products that may be of interest to you. We may disclose information you provide to other companies and they may contact you about your insurance, or to let you know about products or services that may be of interest to you. By requesting us to deal with your insurances you confirm that you are authorised to give consent for the personal data which you provide concerning yourself and others to be used in this way. If you do not wish this information to be used for these purposes please inform us immediately.

Fraud prevention and detection

To prevent and detect fraud we may at any time:

a)     Share information about you with other organisations and public bodies including the Police;
b)    Check and/or file your details with fraud prevention agencies and databases. We and other organisations may also search these agencies and databases to help make decisions about the provision and administration of your insurance; and/or
c)     Undertake credit searches and additional fraud searches.

We can supply on request further details of the databases which we use including:

i)      Claims and Underwriting Exchange Register

Insurers pass information to the Claims and Underwriting Exchange Register (CLUE) to help check claims information provided and also to prevent fraudulent claims. Under the conditions of a policy you must tell the insurer about any incidents which may give rise to a claim and these details will be added to the CLUE Register.

ii)     Motor Insurance Database

Insurers will add motor policy details to the Motor Insurance Database (MID) which is used by the Police and other authorities, amongst others, to establish whether valid insurance is in force.

Credit Search Consent

To make sure you get the best price and terms for your insurance we will use the widest possible range of insurers available to us including some who now carry out searches of their own to protect customers from fraud and to verify identity. They do this using publicly available data which they obtain from a variety of sources, including a credit reference agency and other external organisations. Their search will appear on your credit report whether or not you take out or renew a policy with them.

As well as these searches, some insurers may use a credit check to ascertain the most appropriate payment options for you. This credit check will also appear on your credit report whether or not you take out or renew a policy with them.

By accepting our Terms of Business you consent to us using these insurers when providing you with a quotation for new business or for renewal of an existing policy.

Your rights

Following payment of a fee you are entitled to request a copy of the personal information we hold about you. If you have any questions or would like to find out more about this notice, please contact us.