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TERMS AND CONDITIONS
Terms of Business
Please carefully read these Terms of Business which apply to our appointment and the services we provide you.
Our Service
Services are provided to you by Express Insure Limited.
You agree to provide us with true and accurate information when using the services. We are not responsible for any issues that arise through the provision to us by yourself (or any party instructed to act on your behalf) of incorrect information. You should always check documentation issued to ensure all the details are correct and if this is not the case you should contact us immediately.
We offer insurance from a select number of insurers we have selected as offering value for money and quality service. We provide insurance on an advised basis within the restricted agencies that we have and if for any reason we are unable to place your insurance we will advise you of this.
Consumer Clients
Under the Consumer Insurance (Disclosure and Representation) Act 2012 it is your duty as a consumer to take reasonable care not to make a misrepresentation to an insurer. Under the act a consumer is defined as an individual who enters into an insurance contract wholly or mainly for purposes unrelated to the individual’s trade, business or profession. A failure by the consumer to comply with the insurer’s request to confirm or amend particulars previously given is capable of being a misrepresentation for the purpose of the Act.
It is important that you ensure all statements you make on proposal forms, claim forms and other documents are full and accurate and we recommend that you keep a copy of all correspondence in relation to the arrangement of your insurance. Under the Act an insurer has a remedy against a consumer in respect of qualifying misrepresentations in breach of the consumer’s duty of reasonable care where the insurer deems the misrepresentation to be either deliberate, reckless or careless. If in doubt about any point in relation to your duty to take reasonable care and subsequent qualifying misrepresentations, please contact us immediately.
Commercial Clients
It is your responsibility to provide complete and accurate information to insurers when you take out an insurance policy, throughout the life of the policy, and when you renew your insurance. It is important that you ensure all statements you make on proposal forms, claim forms and other documents are full and accurate and we recommend that you keep a copy of all correspondence in relation to the arrangement of your insurance.
Please also note that any renewal of insurance will be made in reliance upon the information provided by you in connection with your previous insurance policy. We will assume that such information remains correct unless you tell us otherwise. Please note that if you fail to disclose any material information to us and your insurers, this could invalidate your insurance cover and could mean that part or all of a claim may not be paid. You should take particular care to check the accuracy of all information you provide. If in doubt about any point in relation to material facts, please contact us immediately.
Anti-Money Laundering
Current UK money laundering regulations require us to obtain adequate “Know Your Client” information about you. We are obliged to report any evidence or suspicion of financial crime we encounter and we are prohibited from disclosing any such report.
Payment
Our payment terms are as follows (unless specifically agreed by us in writing to the contrary):
- New policies: immediate payment on or before the inception date of the policy
- Alterations: immediate payment on or before the effective date of the change
- Renewals: due in full before the renewal date
If payment is not received from you in accordance with these Terms, we, or your insurer may be forced to cancel or lapse the relevant policy/policies, which could mean that part or all of a claim may not be paid. You may also be in breach of legally required insurance cover.
When renewal is invited and the policy is paid by monthly direct debit, we will issue a notice to you. To ensure you are not left without cover, the absence of a response to this notice will be deemed as your consent to cover being renewed automatically.
In addition to the amount charged by insurers we may charge an arrangement fee and/or charges to cover the administration of your insurance. As insurance brokers our remuneration may be as a fee agreed with you or from commission paid to us by insurers based on the amount they charge you or both. Any applicable insurance premium tax will be shown on the documentation we provide to you. These fees are non-refundable. We take any commission once we receive your payment as cleared funds and prior to payment of the premium to the insurer. You are entitled, at any time, to request information regarding any commission which we may have received as a result of placing or renewing your insurance cover.
Interest will be charged on late payments on a daily basis at 8% over the Bank of England base rate from time to time from the date payment was due. If you owe us any money we are also entitled to retain your documents until we have been paid. No interest will be payable to customers in respect of monies held on account.
Claims
It is essential to notify us immediately of all incidents that may result in a claim against your insurance policy. You must do so whether you believe you are liable or not. Any letter or claim received by you must be passed to us immediately, without acknowledgement. Only by providing prompt notification of incidents can your insurance company take steps to protect your interests. Your policy summary and/or policy document will provide you with details on who to contact to make a claim.
Claims payment will be made in favour of you. If you require a payment to be made to a third party, then you must confirm the required payee name and details and provide a brief explanation for your request.
Cancellation
Your policy document will detail your rights to cancel your insurance once you have taken it out. Depending on the type of policy you have purchased, you may be entitled to cancel within 14 or 30 days of either conclusion of the contract or receiving your policy documentation, whichever occurs later. This is often referred to as a cooling off period.
Where a policy is cancelled before renewal, insurers charge to cover their costs, with the balance refunded to you, subject to no claim having been made. Full details will be available in your policy. In the event of an adjustment giving rise to a return of premium the amount may be refunded or held to credit.
Where you cancel a policy before renewal you will be responsible for paying a charge to meet the cost of cover provided and administration expenses. To enable your insurer to process the cancellation, you will need to return certificates and any official documents to our office within 30 days of your notice to cancel.
Your attention is specifically drawn to the following: Where you cancel your policy after the expiry of the cooling off period or where you request a mid-term adjustment which results in a refund of premium, we reserve the right to charge you for our time and costs. This will usually result in us reducing the amount refunded to you by the full amount of the commission and fees we would have received had you not cancelled. The reason for this is that the majority of our costs are incurred either in initially finding and setting up your policy or in the annual renewal process when we might check the ongoing suitability of the cover the policy offers. These costs are recovered through the commission we earn. If you cancel, this does not give us an opportunity to recover the costs we incurred and would often result in us making a loss. However, any charge made will not exceed the cost of the commission and fees we would have earned.
Insurers
All insurers we place business with are regulated by the Financial Conduct Authority and must comply with strict rules on solvency and principles of good management, however we cannot guarantee the solvency of any insurer with which we place business. This means that you may still be liable for any premium due and not be able to recover the premium paid, whether in full or in part, should an insurer become insolvent.
Complaints
It is our intention to provide you with the highest possible level of customer service at all times. However, we recognise that things can go wrong occasionally and if this occurs we are committed to resolving matters promptly and fairly. Should you wish to complain you may do so:
- In writing to the Complaints Manager Merlin Batchelor
- By telephone on 03333 580 330
- By fax on 0207 183 5669
- By e-mail at contact@expressinsure.net
Should you not be satisfied with our final response, you may be entitled to refer the matter to the Financial Ombudsman Service on 03001 239 123 or you can make a complaint via their website: http://www.financial-ombudsman.org.uk/consumer/complaints.htm
Insurance
We carry professional indemnity cover of £1,750,000. We therefore limit the level of our liability to you to the level of our insurance cover, except as a result of death or personal injury. The limit shall apply to any and all causes of action against us in respect of, or arising from, or in any way connected with our engagement by you. If you require a higher limit of liability please contact us to discuss this. We may be able to make alternative arrangements or advise you of an alternative broker. Where in relation to any loss you also have a cause of action against any third party, we shall only be liable to you for our share of the responsibility but not more than the limit on our liability mentioned in this paragraph.
Financial Services Compensation Scheme (FSCS)
We are covered by the Financial Services Compensation Scheme and you may be entitled to compensation from the scheme if we cannot meet our obligations. Further information about compensation scheme arrangements is available from the Financial Services Compensation Scheme at www.fscs.org.uk
Confidentiality and Data Protection
We are registered under the Data Protection Act and we undertake to comply with the Act in all our dealings with your personal data. We will use and disclose the information we have about you in the course of arranging, placing and administering your insurance. This may involve passing information about you to the Financial Conduct Authority, insurers, other intermediaries, risk management assessors, uninsured loss recovery agencies and other third parties involved (directly or indirectly) in your insurance.
We may also pass information about you to other companies with which we are associated. We or they may also use the information we hold about you to provide you with information on other products and services we or they can offer and which we or they feel may be of interest to you. Please notify us promptly in writing if you do not wish your details to be used for any of these purposes otherwise we shall treat the acceptance of these Terms as evidence of your informed consent.
You agree to us retaining relevant information about yourself and the matter dealt with. We may use this for the purposes of complying with legal and regulatory requirements, to carry out credit checks, to detect, investigate and prevent fraud, for internal analysis and research, and to contact you from time to time with offers of products and services that we believe may be of interest to you. You can opt out of receiving marketing information at any time. We will not pass your details on to third parties other than group companies without your consent unless required to do so by law. If you are kind enough to give us a testimonial we may use the comments and your first name in our publicity but we will not publish any other details about you.
It is your responsibility to make sure you retain control of all communication methods you have previously identified to us, including your postal address, email address and telephone number. We will treat all instructions received from these sources as genuine. If you lose control of any of these resources you must inform us immediately. You agree to notify us immediately of any unauthorised use of your identity or email that could affect our service to you.
General
These Terms supersede all proposals, prior discussions and representations (whether oral or written) between us relating to our appointment as your agent in connection with the arranging and administration of your insurance. These Terms constitute an offer by us to act on your behalf in the arranging and administration of your insurance. In the absence of any specific acceptance communicated to us by you (whether verbal or written) you are deemed to accept our offer to act for you on the basis of these Terms, by conduct, upon your instructing us to arrange, renew or otherwise act for you in connection with insurance matters.
If any provision of these Terms is found to be invalid or unenforceable in whole or in part, the validity of the other provisions of these Terms and the remainder of the provision in question will not be affected.
These Terms shall be governed by the laws of England and the parties agree herewith that any dispute arising out of it shall be subject to the exclusive jurisdiction of the English courts.
We reserve the right to amend these Terms at any time. The updated Terms shall apply to all services rendered since the update.