Visicover Ltd Terms Of Business
- Introduction
- The Financial Conduct Authority
- Confidentiaity & Data Protection
- Our Service
- Registration And Your Personal Dashboard
- Whose Products Do We Offer?
- Financial Strength
- What Will You Pay For Our Services?
- Other Remuneration
- Terms Of Payment
- How We Treat Your Payments To Us?
- What To Do If You Have A Complaint?
- 14 Day Cancelation Rights (Important Information)
- Termination
- The Financial Services Compensation Scheme
- Limit of Liability
- Applicable Law & Language
- Your Duty To Provide Information
- Awareness Of Policy Terms
- Amendment To These Terms of Business
In these Terms of Business, references to "we", "our" or “us” mean Visicover Ltd.
The purpose of this agreement is to set out our professional relationship with you and to detail the services we will provide to you. For your own benefit and protection, please read this document carefully, and if you do not agree with any part of these Terms of Business, please tell us. You will be asked to confirm you have read and accepted these Terms of Business before requesting a quote or purchasing cover.
2) The Financial Conduct Authority
The Financial Conduct Authority is the independent watchdog that regulates financial services. The FCA has authorised us to arrange, deal in and assist with the placing and administration of all types of General Insurance policies. Our FCA Register number is 585660 and you can check our registration status at www.fca.org.uk or by contacting the FCA on 0800 111 6768.
3) Confidentiality & Data Protection
All personal information held by us in relation to you will be treated with the utmost confidence and in accordance with applicable data protection legislation. We will use and disclose information that we have about you in the normal course of arranging and administering your insurance.
Please consult our Privacy Policy for full details on:
- What Personal Information Is Collected?
- What Your Personal Information Is Used For?
- Who May Have Access To Your Information?
- How Long May We Keep Your Personal Information?
- What Are Your Personal Information Rights?
- How Is Your Information Secured?
- What If You Wish To Complain?
We provide an exclusively online service which enables you to:
- Obtain quotes for insurance.
- Purchase policies based on such quotes.
- Make changes as permitted to such policies.
- Access related services such as changing your payment options or downloading copies of your documents.
We also provide an email support service to assist with enquiries on how to use the online facility.
You will not receive advice or any recommendations from us in respect of policies purchased through our website and you will need to make your own choice regarding the suitability of products offered and about how to proceed. We will inform you separately prior to the commencement of each contract if this situation changes.
We are an independent insurance intermediary acting on behalf of the insurers whose details are provided in section 6 below.
5) Registration And Your Personal Dashboard
By registering as a user of our website you will be able to access some or all of the services we describe above. To register you will need to provide a previously unregistered email address and password which will serve as your unique login credentials. Any quotes or policies you create while logged in will be displayed in your “Personal Dashboard” which keeps all your insurance details in one place.
If you want to create a policy under a different name you will need to re-register using a different email address which will create a separate Dashboard.
You can grant other people access to your Dashboard and can specify what actions they are then allowed to perform on your behalf. You remain responsible for their actions, and we cannot accept any responsibility for any changes they make with or without your authority.
Do not share your Dashboard login credentials with anyone or they will have all your privileges and will be able to view or change your cover or details. You remain responsible for their actions, and we cannot accept any responsibility for any changes they make with or without your authority.
You must inform us immediately by email at enquiries.uk@Visicover.com if you have reason to believe that your password is being used in an unauthorised manner.
If your email address changes you can amend your log in credentials accordingly and details on how to do this can be found here.
You will also be asked to record a contact email address which may be the same as your user email address. Please ensure that the contact email address you have supplied is current and is monitored by yourself as we will use this address to notify you of important changes to your cover, including to send you policy documentation and notifications of when your renewal is due.
6) Whose Products Do We Offer?
The range of products we offer and the number of providers of such products varies according to the type of insurance involved as shown in the following table:
|
Options |
Type Of Insurance |
|
For these insurance types we can provide policies from a range of insurers. |
Not Applicable |
|
For these insurance types we can provide policies from a limited number of selected insurance companies. On request, we will give you a list of these. |
Not Applicable |
|
For these insurance types we can provide policies from one insurance company. |
Aviation* Boat* Marine Legal Protection** |
* We have an exclusive contractual obligation to conduct insurance mediation business with Allianz Global Corporate & Specialty SE (AGCS) in respect of certain types of aviation and boat insurance.
** We have an exclusive contractual obligation to conduct insurance mediation business with Arc Legal Assistance Limited in respect of Marine Legal Protection Insurance.
Irrespective of the type of insurance involved, you will be informed of the insurer / underwriter of any policy which you arrange through us.
We regularly assess the financial strength of the Insurance Companies and other intermediaries that we deal with. The process usually involves general observation of the financial ratings applied by independent rating agencies such as Standard & Poor’s and A M Best published with other readily available information within industry guides, newsletters and press releases. Whilst we take care to deal with companies that maintain reasonable solvency margins, we cannot guarantee their financial ability to pay claims.
8) What Will You Pay For Our Services?
We receive a commission from the insurer, either when we are in receipt of cleared funds from yourself, or when the insurer has received cleared funds from us in respect of the premium due under your policy. The individual agreement we have with each insurer will determine which of these methods applies.
We provide an exclusively online service which not only enables you to obtain quotes and purchase cover via our website but also amend your policy yourself online. Given this, should you require us to amend or cancel your policy on your behalf, or send you copies of your documents by email, we may charge an administration fee of £25 for each service. In addition, if the number of amendments you perform exceeds 20 per policy per year, we may charge a fee of £25 per transaction for each additional amendment.
In certain circumstances your insurer may repay part of your premium, such as when the risk covered by your policy is reduced or the policy itself is cancelled. Where the amount of the refunded premium per policy is less than £25 we will retain such amount, but where a mid-term amendment or cancellation charge is made we will set it off against such charge.
If you cancel your policy within the 14 day cooling off period then we reserve the right to charge a fee of £25 plus insurance tax to cover administrative costs. In addition, your insurer may charge you for any cover received during the 14 days cooling off period so you should also refer to the applicable Policy Booklet for details of any fees they may charge in respect of policy cancellation or mid-term amendments.
If you cancel the policy after the 14 day cooling off period, so long as there has not been an event likely to give rise to a claim, you will receive a refund of any premium paid, calculated on a pro rata basis from 30 days after the date of cancellation until the end of the policy year. The difference between this amount and what it would have been if calculated from the effective date is retained as a short-term fee.
If an amendment reduces the risk or cover provided by the Policy, the change will apply from the requested effective date, but the premium reduction will be calculated as though the effective date was 30 days later. The difference between this amount and what it would have been if calculated from the effective date is retained as a short-term fee.
If you are paying by instalments and fail to make a payment by the required date, we may charge a £25 missed payment fee.
Prior to the conclusion of each insurance contract, or upon renewal, we will remind commercial policyholders of their right to be advised of the level of commission which we receive from underwriters. You are entitled, at any time, to request information regarding any commission which we may have received as a result of placing your insurance business.
In addition to commission which is paid to us by insurers we may earn a “profit-share” payment from insurers for efficiently managing business transacted with them. These payments may be calculated by reference to various criteria such as overall annual profitability of the insurance business transacted, taking into account the total amount of claims arising under policies we place with them.
“Profit-share” payments are not directly referable to individual policies and consequently it is not possible to calculate such payments on an individual policy basis, meaning that we are unable to disclose to you how much your policy contributed to any “profit-share” payment we might receive. Ordinarily, and if such a “profit-share” payment is received (which is not guaranteed), it represents a small proportion of the normal commission we receive and will be retained by us.
Please note we only accept payment by the following debit and credit cards – Visa and Mastercard.
Payment of your premium is required before cover commences and by accepting these Terms of Business you authorise us, until you send us further notice by e-mail, to charge your credit or debit card account when payments become due. To enable us to do this, and to reduce credit card fraud, we will retain access to your credit/debit card details.
You may be able to pay your premium in instalments, and details of the options available and associated costs will be provided to you when you apply for a quote online. If you have opted to pay in instalments and you fail to pay an instalment by its due date, we shall have the right to take any or any combination of the following actions:
- terminate the Policy by giving you not less than 15 days’ notice in writing, including, for the avoidance of doubt, where such notification is by email to your registered contact email address;
- apply a £25.00 missed payment fee;
- withdraw the option for you to pay any outstanding premium for the Policy by instalments, in which case the remaining premium shall become payable in full immediately;
- withhold the option for you to pay by instalments for any future renewal of the Policy;
- withhold or withdraw the option for you to pay by instalments for any other policy you may currently hold through us or arrange in future through us.
11) How We Treat Your Payments To Us?
Under the terms of our agreements with the Insurance companies with whom we place business, we normally receive the premiums you pay to us as an Agent of the Insurer, with the money being held in an Insurer Trust bank account in accordance with such agreements. This has the benefit of transferring the risk of such monies to the insurers, as the agreements state the money you pay to us is effectively being received by the insurers. This includes claims money or premium refunds we receive prior to being paid to you.
By holding your money in this way, if we become insolvent, your money remains protected.
In arranging your insurance we may employ the services of other intermediaries who are regulated by the FCA and your premium may be passed to these intermediaries for payment to insurers. These firms are also required to hold clients’ money in a separate trust account. We will also inform you if at any time we are required to pass your premium to firms that operate outside the UK where the protection may be different. Should you not wish us to pass premiums to a firm outside of the UK, please inform us.
12) What To Do If You Have A Complaint?
Our aim is to provide a first class service, however we are aware that, occasionally, it is possible that we may fail to meet your expectations. If you wish to register a complaint, please contact us by writing to Bob Bevan at Visicover Ltd, 21 Heronscourt, Lightwater, Surrey, GU18 5SW or via email to complaints.uk@Visicover.com.
If we are unable to resolve the issue to your satisfaction by the end of the next business day, we will formally investigate the issue. You will receive an acknowledgement, together with a copy of our complaints process promptly and certainly within 5 working days. We will then aim to investigate and provide a resolution as quickly as possible, informing you of the position at no later than 4 weeks and a final response no later than 8 weeks.
If you are not happy with our response, or the position after a period of 8 weeks, you may be eligible to refer your complaint to the Financial Ombudsman Service (FOS) for an independent assessment and opinion.
The FOS Consumer Helpline is on 0800 023 4567 (free for people phoning from a "fixed line" such as a home landline) or 0300 123 9123 (free for mobile-phone users paying monthly charge for calls to numbers starting 01 or 020) and their address is: Financial Ombudsman Service, South Quay Plaza, 183 Marsh Wall, London, E14 9SR.
A full copy of our complaints procedure is available on request.
13) 14 Day Cancellation Rights
You have a legal right to cancel your policy for any reason, subject to no claims having occurred, within 14 days of its start date. The insurer may apply a charge for the period of cover provided and we will charge a fee of £25 plus insurance tax to cover administration charges.
You may cancel this agreement with us at any time. We also reserve the right to cancel this agreement at any time. In any event, we will provide you with reasonably sufficient time to re-arrange your insurance and we will notify you of termination in writing via email together with an explanation if appropriate.
Where you are paying for your insurance by instalments and an instalment payment is not received by us on or before the date when it is due to be paid you agree that we may on your behalf instruct the insurer to cancel the insurance and offset any refund of premium which may be received against any money which you owe to us or the insurer. In such circumstances you will remain liable for any time on risk or other charge and you will also be responsible for putting in place any alternative insurance.
Terms and conditions relating to cancellation or any mid-term amendments vary between insurers so please see the applicable policy booklet for full details.
15) The Financial Services Compensation Scheme
If we are unable to meet our obligations you may be entitled to compensation from the FSCS depending on the type of insurance involved. If we have advised or arranged insurance for you this may be covered for 90% of a claim, without any upper limit, however compulsory classes of insurance (such as motor insurance) may be covered for 100% of a claim. Further information is available from the FSCS helpline on 0207 892 7300 and or via their website here
Please note that certain classes of insurance, including aviation and marine, are not covered by the provisions of the Financial Services Compensation Scheme.
The FSCS is the UK’s statutory fund of last resort for customers of authorised financial services firms. Compensation is usually payable if an authorised firm is unable or unlikely to pay claims usually because it has ceased trading or become insolvent.
16) Limit of Liability (Important Information)
This clause restricts the amount that may be recoverable as a result of our negligence. Other than for injury or death of any person, our liability to you for the services we provide shall not exceed £1,500,000 in connection with any one event or connected events.
This Terms of Business is subject to English Law and the jurisdiction of the English Courts. We will use the English language for all communications, the contractual terms and conditions, and any information we are required to supply to you, before and during the duration of the contract.
18) Your Duty To Provide Information
18.a) Consumers
You are considered to be a consumer if you are arranging insurances for purposes which are outside of your trade or profession.
If you are a consumer you are under a legal duty to take reasonable care not to make a misrepresentation to the insurer. You will be deemed to have made a misrepresentation without reasonable care if you deliberately, recklessly, or carelessly answer insurers’ specific questions incorrectly. A misrepresentation which is made dishonestly is always to be taken as showing a lack of reasonable care.
Depending on the type of misrepresentation made, this could result in your insurance contract being rendered void (so that claims would not be paid and you would have no cover), the terms of your insurance contract being amended, or insurers reducing proportionately the amount of your claim they pay to take account of any increased premium that they would have charged.
18.b) Commercial Clients
A consumer is someone who is arranging insurance for purposes which are outside of their trade or profession. If you are not a consumer you are considered to be a commercial client.
If you are a commercial client you have a duty to make a fair presentation of the risk and this will continue for the lifetime of the policy, including any changes that may occur after receipt of a quotation.
Your duty includes the following:
- The disclosure of all material circumstances of which you are, or ought to be aware, or providing sufficient information to put a prudent insurer on notice that it should make further enquiries.
- Your disclosure is made in a way that is reasonably clear and accessible to a prudent insurer.
- That the representations made by you about material facts are substantially correct (and that representations or expectations or beliefs are made in good faith).
You are expected to know what would be revealed by your reasonable search of information which you, or the senior management of your firm, knows or ought to know about the business, the activities undertaken and the reasons for seeking insurance for the particular risk.
A material fact is one which would influence a prudent insurer in deciding whether to accept a proposed insurance or not and, if they accept, on what terms, conditions and costs. If you are in any doubt as to whether a fact may be material or not you should, in your own interest disclose it.
Please read all your policy documentation carefully to ensure you are aware of the cover, limits and other terms that apply.
Please ensure you pay particular attention to any warranties and conditions applicable to your policy as your failure to comply with these may mean all or part of your claim may not be paid.
We recommend that you keep copies of any documentation sent to or received from us for your own protection. Please do not hesitate to contact us on enquiries.uk@visicover.com if you are in any doubt.
20) Amendment To These Terms of Business
We may amend these Terms of Business at any time. However, unless we have emailed you beforehand to give you 14 days notification of any such amendments, you will only become subject to such changes from the date and time that you purchase a new policy from us, or from the date and time that you amend or renew an existing policy with us. A copy of the modified Terms of Business will always be made available to you prior to your completing any such purchase, amendment, or renewal.
