Insurance
If you have a complaint about an insurance company or claim, we can help. Find out more about the types of insurance complaints we deal with, and what we can do to help put things right.
How we handle complaints about insurance
We look at complaints about a wide range of insurance types, including commercial vehicle, property, professional indemnity insurance, employer’s liability, public liability and business interruption insurance.
We look at the facts and circumstances of each individual complaint, and listen impartially to you and the financial business. We’ll then decide what’s fair and reasonable in the circumstances, taking into account policy wording, any relevant laws and regulations and industry best practice.
Once we’ve considered everything, we’ll set out our findings, explaining whether we think the business has treated you fairly, or not. If we think the business has treated you unfairly, we’ll set out what we think needs to be done to put things right.
Complaints we see
We receive complaints about a range of insurance products and issues.
- suitability
- mis-selling
- claims declined or reduced
- delays in settling claims
- cancellation by insurer
- other administrative issues
Business interruption insurance
We have a dedicated page that contains information about business interruption insurance complaints caused or affected by Covid-19 (coronavirus) and how we can help.
How to complain
Bringing a complaint to us is straightforward and won’t cost you anything. Find out more about our process and how to submit a complaint using our online form.
How long it takes
Read more about when you can expect to hear from us once we’ve started to investigate your complaint.
Case studies
Here is a selection of case studies that illustrate the range of ways we investigate and resolve insurance complaints.
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What happened
Company H employs gardeners who carry out work in their local area. The company owns a small fleet of vans for travelling to jobs, and a limited-edition vintage van for promotion purposes. All the vehicles were covered by Company H’s fleet insurance policy.
One night the premises where the vehicles were kept was broken into and the vintage van was badly vandalised. Company H made a claim to their insurer.
The insurer struggled to source the parts to repair the vintage van so, after several months, it gave Company H a cash allowance to buy the parts themselves. Company H didn’t think this was the right outcome and said that the insurer should either organise for the van to be repaired or should write it off and reimburse them for its value.
What we said
When we looked at Company H's policy documents, we could see that they had declared all the necessary information about the vintage van when they took the policy out so the insurer could assess the risk of providing cover for a bespoke vehicle.
We thought that the insurer should have done more to try to get the van repaired and, if it couldn’t, then the van should have been written off. We also thought that there had been unnecessary delays in how the claim was dealt with.
We asked the insurer to reopen the claim and to take responsibility for the van repairs, and we also said that it should pay Company H £250 for the inconvenience caused by the amount of time they had spent dealing with the claim.
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What happened
Company I operates a vehicle repair garage with a small shop next door. The premises were part of a series of properties under railway arches. After being established for several years, it became evident that there were problems with the roof of the building and it transpired that some structural repairs were needed. Company I had to shut the garage and the shop while the works were carried out.
Company I made a claim on their business interruption insurance for the time they couldn’t operate, but their insurer declined the claim. The insurer said that Company I's policy did not cover them for temporary closure caused by repair work to their premises.
Company I didn’t think this was fair and said that they had taken out the insurance to cover them for when they couldn’t open the business. They didn’t understand why the insurer wasn’t paying out.
What we said
We considered all the information provided about the complaint and decided that the insurer did not act unreasonably in declining the claim. Although Company I had business interruption insurance this didn’t mean the insurer would pay out for all possible causes of closure.
We looked at the policy and found that closure for structural works was not something that the policy covered.
Given the policy set this out clearly, and the insurer had explained the reason why it had declined the claim, we didn’t think the insurer should have done anything differently.
