This document sets out the terms on which we agree to act for you, our client, and contains details of our regulatory and legal responsibilities. Please contact us immediately if there is anything in these Terms of Business which you do not understand. By doing business with us you agree to do so on the terms of this document unless we both agree otherwise. We may amend the terms of business agreement at any time by giving you fourteen days’ notice in writing.
The Regulator and Our Activities
We are authorised and regulated by the Financial Conduct Authority which regulates the sale, advice and service standards of general insurance business to ensure clients are treated fairly. Our permitted business is advising, arranging and assisting in the administration and performance of general insurance contracts. We may also act as agents of insurers in which case we will advise you. Our FCA register number is 306267. You may check this information by visiting the FCA’s website Home (fca.org.uk) or by telephoning the FCA on 0800 111 6768.
Law and Language
This Terms of Business Agreement 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.
Our Service
We are an insurance intermediary and can act both as agent of insurer and on behalf of you. We offer a wide range of insurance products and have access to many of the leading insurers in the UK. We advise and arrange insurance cover to meet your requirements and help you with any changes you wish to make. We explain the main features of the products and services we offer, who the insurer is, important details of cover and benefits, significant conditions, exclusions or obligations that you must meet and the period of cover. We accept verbal instructions; however, we prefer instructions in writing.
We will ask questions to enable us to assess reasonably your insurance requirements, this may include checking information that we already hold about you and your existing insurance arrangements with us and other parties.
We will provide you with advice and guidance, after assessing what you want and need and recommend a suitable policy based on our experience of dealing with similar risks. We will confirm to you the level of service we are providing as part of our sales process. In all cases our service will include arranging and administering your insurance, including helping you with on-going changes.
If we use the services of another intermediary to place your insurance, we will advise you of the name of the intermediary we use and the name of the insurer.
Conflict Management
Whilst we act in the capacity of agents for our product providers (i.e., the insurance companies we do business with) we are required to have in place appropriate governance controls to help us meet our regulatory objectives, and have in place effective organisational controls, including appropriate supervision to ensure we manage any and all conflicts of interests which may arise or may be identified from time to time, including gifts and benefits granted and accepted, which may damage the interests of our relationship with either our distributors one or more customers.
Our Customers Best Interests
Our primary aim is to ensure, for any customer (or potential customer) that we act honestly, fairly and professionally and in the customers best interest including giving customers information they might need to understand the relevance of any information we provide, as well as objectively giving that information when it is most useful to a customer to enable informed decision making.
Method of Communication Whilst you do have a choice in the way we communicate with you, we will principally provide you with information using telephone or email. During the process of dealing with us you will be given an option to receive information in this way, meaning if you would like information in a paper format, we will be happy to provide it.
Our Product Selection (Fair and Personal Analysis)
We offer products from a wide range of insurance companies. Our selection usually involves presenting to a reasonable number of insurance companies that will insure for the risk at hand, and this is called a fair and personal analysis of the market. Sometimes we may only approach a specified number of insurers and this is a Panel, or in some cases, we may only approach one insurer, in either case, we will tell you the basis as part of our selling process. We can also provide a list of the companies that form the Panel we have approached at quotation stage.
Our Product Selection (Panel)
We only offer products from a panel of insurers, that we have selected as appropriate for the cover you require. The processes we have in place means that the characteristics of these products take account of our target customer’s demands and needs and include sourcing products from one or more of the product providers we deal with.
Our Product Selection (Single Insurer)
Sometimes we only offer certain products from one insurer (for example, an excess protection product as an optional extra) from one insurer and so do not approach other providers. We will advise you if we are contractually obliged to use any insurer.
Product Oversight and Governance
All of the products we offer are ultimately manufactured by product providers (usually the Insurance Companies providing cover). As a distributor we have measures in place to:
Obtain information about the product, the product approval process and understand the identified target market.
- Ensure that they understand the value assessment that the manufacturer has undertaken, so that they can distribute the product accordingly.
- Consider the impact that their distribution strategy and process has on the value of the product. This includes considering any remuneration they receive as part of the distribution strategy and ensuring that it does not result in the product failing to offer fair value to the end customers.
- Provide information to support the manufacturer in their product reviews. This includes information on remuneration where this has an impact on the value of the product.
- Amend their distribution processes if they identify it results in harm to customers. This should include taking appropriate remedial action
- Carry out annual product reviews for all products
Your obligations and duty of disclosure
When instructing us to place or to renew insurances your obligations will differ depending on whether you are classed as either a consumer or a commercial client. If you are a consumer you must use all reasonable care not to make a misrepresentation when providing information to insurers. If you are a commercial client, you must make a fair presentation of the risk to insurers. This requires that you fully disclose in a clear and accessible manner any facts known, or which ought to be known, to you (a material fact) likely to influence an insurer’s decision in connection with the risk, having made a reasonable search of information available to you. This duty continues throughout the term of your insurance. All answers or statements given on a proposal form, statement of fact, claim form or any other document relevant to your insurances will be your sole responsibility and you should always check the accuracy of the information you provide to us and/or insurers. Misrepresentation or nondisclosure of information provided to us and/or insurers may entitle insurers to decline claims and may lead to your policy being completely ‘invalidated’. You should seek our advice if you are in any doubt as to your obligations. When a policy is issued, you must check this carefully to confirm that this meets your needs. If you are in any doubt over any of the policy terms and conditions, please seek our advice promptly.
Demands and Needs
Consumers
In assessing your demands and needs we will ask you a number of questions. It is your responsibility to ensure you give us complete and accurate answers to any such questions, not only when you take out your policy, but also when you decide to renew or make any changes during any term of a contract of insurance (this applies to any changes in information to all the people on the policy).
Non-Consumers
It is your duty to provide all materially important information, fully, completely, and accurately to us and your insurers not only when you take out your insurance, but also throughout the life of your arrangement, at the annual renewal or at any other time when changes occur. If you are dealing with us in a commercial capacity, you will be under a duty to make a fair presentation. You are therefore required to disclose any matter which you know or ought to know that would influence the judgement of an insurer in deciding whether to insure the risk and on what terms. This would include but not limited to, matters such as, previous non-motoring criminal convictions, personal bankruptcy, and any previous company liquidations.
If you are unsure whether the matter is relevant or not you should provide sufficient information so as to put an insurer on notice that it needs to make further enquiries if necessary.
We will make a specific recommendation or provide you with specific advice, we will give you the relevant information you require, honestly, fairly, and professionally and in a way that is in your best interests (i.e., we will alert you to important terms and conditions about the contract. You will be provided with a statement of your demands and needs as part of our sales process and you can request a copy at any time during the lifecycle of your insurance arrangement with us.
Renewals
For Commercial customers, once we have arranged a policy to which you have agreed, the placement of that policy will not automatically be reviewed at each renewal unless you request it and/or we deem it necessary. Whilst we will make every effort to contact you prior to renewal to obtain your instructions, if for whatever reason we are not in receipt of your instructions by your renewal date, in order to protect your position, we may at our absolute discretion renew your policy on the basis of our recommendation. Such renewal will be based on the information you have already provided to us and you should, therefore, advise us of any changes. However, we reserve the right not to renew your policy if we do not receive your instructions by the renewal date and we will not be held liable for any loss you may suffer if you fail to provide the necessary instructions in sufficient time before renewal.
For Consumers, you need take no action if you wish to maintain your insurance cover by having your policy renewed. We will contact you before your policy is due for renewal and provide you with renewal terms. If you do not wish to renew your policy, you must inform us prior to the renewal date. Otherwise, we will instruct insurers to renew your policy automatically on the renewal terms offered. By accepting these terms of business, you are giving us your consent to deal with your renewals on a tacit renewal basis (where it applies)
Claims
It is essential that claims or any circumstances which could give rise to a claim are notified to insurers immediately. Notification should include all material facts concerning the claim. The policy wordings describe the procedures and conditions attached to making a claim. Where agreed, we provide a claim handling service for as long as you remain a customer of ours. We reserve the right to charge a reasonable fee for our services if you cease to be a customer or in our opinion the claim is complex, requiring additional resources or takes longer than one year to achieve a satisfactory settlement. If you cease to be a client, we also reserve the right to cease dealing with any outstanding claims and transfer relevant files and papers to the insurance broker or agent you have appointed. If you make a claim and subsequently cancel your insurance policy during the same period of insurance in which the claim was made, insurers reserve the right to charge and retain the full annual premium.
Client money and non-client money
Client money is money of any currency that we receive and hold in the course of carrying on insurance mediation on behalf of our clients or which we treat as client money in accordance with the FCA’s client money rules. Client money can be held in one of the following ways:
On behalf of insurers or underwriters if they agree that we should treat it as client money
- Subject to a statutory trust
- Subject to a non-statutory trust
Some insurers may agree that we will hold premium due to be paid to them or claims monies or return premium refunds due to be paid to you, on behalf of those insurers rather than on your behalf. This money is not “client money”. We will only do this where we have written agreement with those insurers to that effect. This arrangement (commonly called “Risk Transfer”) is, we believe, generally of benefit to you because you are protected to the extent that the premiums which we receive are treated at Law as being received by the insurer when they are received by us and claims monies and return premium refunds will only be treated as received by you when they are actually paid over to you. However, this does mean, for example, that we may still be required to pay the premium over to an insurer who becomes insolvent or in exceptional circumstances that an insurer might prevent us from paying claims monies to the intended payee after we have received them but before we have passed them on.
Client money segregation
In accordance with FCA rules, client money is held in a statutory trust account. The rules strictly forbid payments out of that account to insurers unless the money has been received from the client. This means that it only allows us to use the money held in trust on behalf of a customer for paying that customers’ premium to an insurance company and to pay premium refunds or claims we receive from that insurance company to the customer once the premium has been received from that insurance company. We cannot use that customer’s money to pay another customers premium or refund. We do not pay any interest on premiums held by us in the course of arranging and administering your insurance, unless, in the case of consumer transactions we receive more than £20 per transaction, and then we will ask for your permission to retain the interest. Unless you tell us otherwise, you are consenting to us holding your money in this way. By holding your money in this way, means that in the event that this firm becomes insolvent your money remains protected.
Costs and our remuneration
Our remuneration may be as a brokerage fee, as a commission (which is a percentage of the insurance premium paid by you to us in respect of your insurance and allowed by the insurer with whom the insurance is placed) or a combination of the two. Brokerage fees and commissions are earned for the policy period and we will be entitled to retain all brokerage fees and commission in respect of the full policy period in relation to policies placed by us. Anything which is not a commission is considered to be a brokerage fee. We will provide details of the costs of the insurance offered and not impose charges in addition to the premium required by the insurer without first disclosing the amount and purpose of the charge. We reserve the right to charge for policy amendments, claims handling or cancellations. You are entitled at any time to request information regarding any commission which we may have received from insurers as a result of placing your business insurance.
Where we introduce you to a premium finance company, we may also receive an introducer’s fee or other remuneration in relation to any administration we may do in connection with the financing arrangement. This is usually expressed as a percentage of the individual loan and is paid to us directly by the premium finance provider. This means that the amount you pay for credit and the overall cost of arranging your insurance will vary according to the interest charged by the lender and the amount of commission we earn.
Using premium finance makes the overall cost of the insurance more expensive. A full breakdown of the cost of your insurance and the cost of credit will be provided as part of your new business or renewal quotation before you make a decision whether to proceed.
Payment Options
We will provide you with full details of all the payment options available to you when we provide you with your insurance premium.
Premium Finance
We may be able to arrange finance for insurance instalments through the insurer or through a preferred premium finance provider. We act as a credit broker in arranging premium finance facilities and we will give you further information about this before we finalise your instalment arrangements. When we are aware there is an alternative premium finance arrangement available, with a lower annual percentage rate, for example direct with your insurer, we will let you know. This will enable you to make an informed decision.
We will not make a specific recommendation or provide you with specific advice, we will give you the relevant information you require, honestly, fairly and professionally and in a way that is in your best interests this may include information about one or more agreements that you may be eligible for, so that you can compare them, which will enable you to make your own choice about whether to go ahead with any particular finance agreement.
Important
Using premium finance makes the overall cost of the insurance more expensive. We will ask you to confirm that you have actively elected (that you have “opted in”) to pay via premium finance. A full breakdown of the cost of your insurance and the cost of credit will be provided as part of your new business or renewal quotation before you make a decision whether to proceed. Your agreement will last for 12 months but the premium finance may last for a shorter period.
If you choose to enter a finance arrangement, your details will be passed to a third party (insurer or lender) to enable them to contact you and you should contact us at the address given in this document if you do not want your details passed to that party.
This finance arrangement will be subject to interest charges that we will confirm to you when providing the full details. Importantly, the arrangement you will enter into will be with the finance company not us. It is an entirely separate contract irrespective of the insurance contract. In the event of your failure to meet with the contractual obligations regarding payment the finance provider could approach the insurer to seek a termination of the insurance contract to recoup their outstanding finance arrears. You will be liable to pay their costs and charges if you do not keep up your repayments and cover is cancelled under your policy. This is because the agreement is between you, the policyholder, and the finance company direct, not us or the insurer. For the provision of premium finance facilities, a credit check will be performed if you wish to use this payment. If you are a consumer as defined under the Consumer Credit Act, you will have the benefit of a 14-day cooling off period.
It is important that you read the finance agreement that is sent to you before you agree to enter into such an agreement. Your policy cover will cease if you fail to keep up payments on an instalment agreement or premium finance facility related to it.
Complaints
If you wish to make a complaint against Oddie Dalton or your insurers the details should be sent to the individual dealing with the matter at Oddie Dalton using the contact details provided at the top of this document. If we are unable to resolve the issue to your satisfaction by the end of the third business day following receipt, we will formally investigate the matter. You will receive an acknowledgement of the matter 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 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" (for example, a landline at home) or 0300 123 9123 (free for mobile-phone users paying monthly charge for calls to No’s starting 01 or 02). Alternatively, you can contact them at Financial Ombudsman Service, Exchange Tower, Harbour Exchange Square, London, E14 9SR. www.financial-ombudsman.org.uk A full copy of our complaint’s procedure is available on request.
Financial Services Compensation Scheme (FSCS)
If we are unable to meet our obligations, you may be entitled to compensation from the FSCS. If we have advised or arranged insurance for you this will be covered for 90% of a claim, without any upper limit, however, claims under compulsory insurance, professional indemnity insurance and certain claims for injury, sickness or infirmity of the policyholder are protected at 100%. Further information is available from the FSCS helpline on 0800 678 1100 or 020 7741 4100 and www.fscs.org.uk.
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.
Limit of liability
This clause restricts the amount that may be recoverable because of our negligence. Other than injury or death of any person (for which no cap on liability will apply), our liability to you for the services we provide shall not exceed £3,000,000 about any one event or connected events.
Money laundering / proceeds of crime
We are obliged to report to the Serious Organised Crime Agency any suspicion of money laundering or terrorist financing activity and we are prohibited from disclosing any such report.
Privacy notice and data protection
We act as Data Controller for personal data you supply in accordance with the EU General Data Protection Regulations and any relevant national law. We aim to process your data responsibly, fairly and in strict accordance with the General Data Protection Regulations (GDPR) and The Data Protection Act (DPA) 2018.
The GDPR modernised data protection law requiring enhanced disclosures about what we do with your information including (but not limited to):
• Our lawful bases of processing;
• The information we collect, and how we use and share that information;
• How long we keep information, including the purposes (e.g., administer your policy);
• The technical and organisational measures we have in place to safeguard your information;
• Your individual rights; and
• Our approach to marketing
It is vitally important to take time to read our Privacy Notice carefully as it contains full details of the basis on which we will process (i.e., collect, use, share, and or transfer) and store your information. It is also your obligation to ensure you show our Privacy Notice to all parties related to this insurance arrangement. If you have given us information about someone else, you are deemed to have their permission to do so.
Our full Privacy Policy is available in writing on request. You can find more details about data protection from the Information Commissioner’s Office at www.ico.org.uk.
Financial Strength
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.
Insurance Premium Tax (IPT) Your premium detailed in the policy will include IPT at the prevailing rate. If the rate of IPT is amended by the Government, your premium will be amended by the insurer to reflect the change.
Termination In the event that our services are terminated by you, other than at the expiry of the relevant policy period or at renewal, we will be entitled to retain all fees and commission payable, whether or not the same has been received by us, including for the avoidance of doubt, any sum due in respect of any premium or outstanding instalments or any premium payable in respect of any subsequent annual period forming part of an insurance agreed for a period in excess of one year, placed by us prior to the date of termination
Your Right to Cancel (Applicable to Consumers only)
Please contact us if you wish to cancel any policy that we have arranged for you. Customers acting outside their trade or profession (Consumers) will usually have a legal right to cancel policies for any reason, subject to no claims having occurred, within 14 days of receiving the full terms & conditions. This period is extended to 30 days for Pure Protection or Payment Protection contracts. You will always be advised where this Right applies. A charge may apply for the period of cover provided and, in addition, an administration charge will apply as shown in the charges section above, you can cancel using any method of communication as set out at the top of this document.
Your Right to Cancel (Non-Consumer)
Commercial insurance policies do not routinely have cancellation rights except those available to the insurer. As a Commercial customer, you do not have the same cancellation rights by law as a consumer but may still have specific contract rights and reference should be made to the policy document to ascertain your position. Where returns of commercial premiums are made on cancellation, it is usually following cancellation by the insurer, not the policyholder. On cancellation of a policy any refund or premium allowed by the insurer will be paid to you after deducting our annual commission and fees.
Automatic Renewal
Where your policy is set to automatically renew (please check your documents) the renewal premium will be collected automatically from your card or bank.
You have an option to cancel the auto renewal at any time by contacting either us or your insurer via telephone, post or email. Please notify us as soon as possible if you do not want your insurance to automatically renew.
If you do choose to cancel the auto renewal, then it is important that you contact us to renew your policy, as If we do not hear from you, all cover will cease as of the expiry date shown in your renewal schedule.
Benefits of auto renewal
- Convenience - if you're happy with your cover and renewal premium, you won't need to do anything as your policy will automatically renew.
- No interruption of cover
If your policy is not set to automatically renew (please check your documents) it is important that you contact us to arrange cover as if we do not hear from you all cover will end on your policy expiry date.
Ownership
The Director of Oddie Dalton is also a director for the optional extra excess product company which provides excess protection insurance and is underwritten by Great American Insurance. There is no other shareholding, voting rights or ownership with any other insurers.
Marketing
It is extremely important that all parties insured under your policy understand how we process information, including that set out in this Terms of Business Agreement. In distributing any marketing, we will act honestly, fairly, and professionally and in the best interests of a customer or potential customer, including asking you separately for your permission (consent) to contact you, and the
means to contact you (such as by phone, or e-mail, push notifications, SMS text, or post) to tell you about new products, services, offering rewards etc. It is important that you understand you have the right to withdraw or alter your marketing preferences at any time either using the subscription link contained in any electronic marketing, by calling our main office telephone, or writing to us.