Terms of Business

Version 1.4 (January 2010)

Disclosure of Information

It is important that you understand that any information, statements or answers made by you to either your insurer or us are your responsibility and must be correct. The Insurer relies on this information to set the premium and accept the contract. This is the basis of the ‘contract of utmost good faith’ utilised by the entire insurance industry.

Your attention is drawn in particular to the importance of the declaration and signature on any Insurer’s proposal form or statement of fact, as the failure to disclose material facts that may affect the insurance, or any inaccuracies in your answers, may invalidate your insurance cover in part or in whole. Material facts are matters that could influence your proposal or renewal. They must be disclosed at the earliest opportunity and certainly at each renewal. If you have any doubt regarding this matter, please contact us and we will be happy to assist you if required. You are advised to keep copies of documentation sent to or received from us for your own protection.

Policy Terms and Conditions

When a policy is issued you are strongly advised to read it carefully. This is the document that includes the schedule and may include legal documents such as a certificate of insurance. If you are in any doubt over any of the policy terms and conditions, please contact us immediately.

Data Protection

Any information that you disclose to us will be kept fully confidential, and will not be made available to any other parties other than where necessary to arrange your insurance and deal with any claims made, or in cases where we are required to do so by any legal, statutory or regulatory body. Under the Data Protection Act 1988 you have the right to see personal information about you that we hold on our records and this will be made available to you for a nominal charge (see Charges section) should you so require. Insurers will pass information to the Claims and Underwriting Exchange run by Insurance Database Services Ltd and to the Motor Insurance Anti-Fraud and Theft Register run by the Association of British Insurers. This process is undertaken in order to check the information provided by you and to prevent fraudulent claims. Motor insurance details are added to the Motor Insurance Database run by the Motor Insurers Information Center, which has been formed to help identify uninsured drivers. In the event of an accident, Insurers and the Motor Insurers Bureau can access the database to identify relevant policy information. To preserve your confidentiality we may ask you to provide us with formal written authority to deal with any other person that you have asked us to contact - such as a friend or family member - prior to us dealing with them.

Professional Indemnity

We fully accept responsibility for any advice that we offer you, but in the event of an error or omission, we maintain Professional Indemnity Insurance for your protection and ease of mind.

Payment of Premiums

In addition to cash, postal orders, cheques and bankers drafts we accept most major debit and credit cards. We advise that we may make a charge of 2.5% for credit card payments to offset charges made upon us for this type of transaction - if this is the case we will always advise you beforehand. We also provide payment facilities via finance companies. We recommend that if you opt for this payment method, you thoroughly check the terms and conditions of this facility. If we raise an invoice for payment of a deposit or the premium we request that this is paid within the due time to enable cover to continue. Failure to remit any outstanding premiums may jeopardise cover.

Termination

Our services may be terminated without cause or penalty by giving one month's notice in writing. In the event that you terminate our services, other than at the expiry of the policy, we will be entitled to retain any fees and all of the commission payable. The responsibility for handling claims reported after the date of termination shall in the absence of an express agreement be the responsibility of the party taking over the role.

Client Money

Our financial arrangements with Insurance Companies are on a Risk Transfer basis where we are acting as agent of the insurer. Such monies are deemed to be held by the Insurer(s) with which your insurance is arranged, as soon as we receive them. If Risk Transfer does not apply such monies will be held by us in a Statutory Client Trust Account in accordance with FSA rules. For the purpose of some transactions, client money may pass through other authorised intermediaries. Interest will not be paid to clients in respect of money held in our Client Trust Accounts. In our financial dealings with you, we are unable to subtract that element of a premium, which is due to us as commission, until the full premium has been paid by you and has cleared our bank account. In addition, we are unable to pay your premium to an insurance company until we have received it from you (unless we are able to fund any unpaid element of the premium not yet paid by you out of our own funds.)

Insurance Documents

We reserve the right to withhold (for a motor insurance policy) the annual certificate of insurance pending full payment of premium.

Our Income

Our remuneration will either be as a commission, which is a percentage of the insurance premium (before Insurance Premium Tax) paid to insurers, or as a fee, or a combination of the two. Commission and fees are earned for the policy period and we will be entitled to retain all commission and fees in relation to policies placed by us in respect of the full policy period.

New and Renewal Charges – £50.00

For policy cancellations we do not refund the part of the premium that represents our commission. For some insurance policies, we may reduce this at our discretion. In arranging your insurance, we may make a charge equal to the work that we undertake in arranging your insurance and/or in administrating your insurance policy throughout the policy year – including the level of commitment we make to you in assisting you with your insurance matters.

Dishonoured / Represented Payments – £25.00

Data Protection – £10.00

We will make the above charge to supply data held on you. We will provide this data to you within 40 days of receiving your payment.

Mid Term adjustments to policies - £25.00

Policy Charges

We consider that it is important that our clients understand why we make charges, which form an important part of our income. The Financial Services Authority heavily regulates our business and in order to protect the insurance buying public, the financial burden of this regulation is placed on us as insurance professionals. We have to comply with legislation and more so, we have to regularly report to our regulators to prove that we are acting with financial and moral integrity. We are also required to prove to our regulators that we “Treat Customers Fairly”. Part of this process involves lengthy record keeping and administrative tasks performed by us on each and every policy quoted and sold including reviewing processes by management and regulators to ensure that we operate within a culture of “Treating Customers Fairly”.

Insurance Policy - Cancellation Rights

There may be a right to cancel an insurance policy mid term. However, there may be a number of penalties imposed by insurers on policy cancellation.

Complaints and Compensation Procedure

We aim to offer a high level of customer service at all times, if however you are not satisfied, contact Gavin Mead by telephone on 01392 426799 or in writing to the above address. We do have in operation a full complaints procedure, which is available upon request. If you are still not satisfied after speaking with Gavin Mead you may be able to refer the matter to the Financial Ombudsman Service. Please contact us for further details.

We are covered by the Financial Services Compensation Scheme (FSCS). You may be entitled to compensation from the scheme if we cannot meet our obligations. This depends on the type of insurance, size of the business and the circumstances of the claim. Further information about the compensation scheme arrangements is available from the FSCS.

Call Recording

Calls may be recorded for training, monitoring and security purposes.