Terms of Business

Quote Us Insurance Services (Insurance Brokers) 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 and assisting you if you need to make a claim, or where we outsource claims handling facilities to give you an enhanced service.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. If you mislay your policy at any time, we will arrange for a replacement policy document (a fee may be incurred), should you request it.

Our Selection (Fair 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 analysis of the market.

Sometimes we may only approach two or three insurers and this is a limited 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. You can also request a list of the companies that form the Panel we have approached. Sometimes we will only approach one insurer, in which case we will tell you as part of our selling process

Money

We will hold money that you pay to us in accordance with the regulators rules or under a risk transfer agreement with insurers. This will include holding your money in the following way. Our Fees, Commission and Charges

We usually receive a commission from the insurance provider with whom we place your business, and in such a case, the commission will be paid to us either when we are in receipt of cleared funds from you (or the premium finance company, if one has been used) or, when the insurer has received cleared funds from us in respect of the premium due under your policy. The individual agreements we have with each insurer will determine which of the two methods above is used to make this transfer of commission. We also receive commission for arranging finance agreements for the payment of insurance premiums and this is usually expressed as a percentage of the individual loan and is paid to us directly by the premium finance provider. We may also receive a commission or fee for passing introductions to other professional firms.

In addition, we may make the following charges to cover the administration of your insurance:

Policies voided or cancelled from inception by insurers will be treated as a cancellation and we will retain any commission and fees before returning the net premium to you. By accepting these terms of business, you agree that we may retain the portion of the premium that relates to commission that would have been due to us.

Specific charges, which apply to individual policies, will be advised to you prior to the commencement of each contract applicable to that policy. The specific charge and purpose of any additional charges will always be advised to you in advance.

You are entitled to request at any time, information about the commissions that we may have received in connection with your insurance, if you want this information please contact us.

CHARGES

  • Arranging New Polices £ 25.00
  • Mid-term Adjustments Min £ 25.00
  • Refunds Refunds(we refund NET of our commission) £ 35.00
  • Renewals £ 25.00
  • Credit Card Payments 2.5%
  • Cancellation Cancellations (we refund NET of our commission) £ 35.00

Our Service

We can act both as agent of insurer, and on behalf of you, the customer. We have in place management controls to deal with any conflicts of interest that might arise. Unless we advise you otherwise, we are acting on your behalf. We also act on behalf of insurers when collecting premiums under risk transfer 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 and assisting you if you need to make a claim, or where we outsource claims handling facilities to give you an enhanced service.

All or any other non-related claims to our products, may incur a claims handling service charge of a minimum 25% of the claim pursued or £250, whichever may be the greater. You will be advised of this prior to any claims acceptance.

Law and Language

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 & conditions, and any information we are required to supply to you, before and during the duration of the contract.

The Regulator

The Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) is an independent watchdog that regulates financial services.

The FCA has authorised us to advise, arrange, deal in and assist with the placing and administration of all types of General Insurance policies.
Our FCA Register number is 436941 and you can check our status and permissions at www.fsa.gov.uk/register or by contacting the FCA on 0845 606 1234.

Confidentiality and General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR)
We will exchange the information that you provide to us with insurance companies and other brokers or agents for the purposes of obtaining quotations and arranging cover, this may result in a credit check to confirm your identity and minimise the risk of fraud. We will treat all information as private and confidential, and in strict accordance with the Data Protection Act 1998 (DPA), even when you are no longer a customer and only share information if we are required to do so by law, or regulation.

We collect and use relevant information about you to provide you with your insurance cover or the insurance cover that benefits you and to meet our legal obligations. This information includes details such as your name, address and contact details and any other information that we collect about you in connection with the insurance cover from which you benefit. This information may include more sensitive details such as information about your health and any criminal convictions you may have. In certain circumstances, we may need your consent to process certain categories of information about you (including sensitive details such as information about your health and any criminal convictions you may have). Where we need your consent, we will ask you for it separately. You do not have to give your consent and you may withdraw your consent at any time. However, if you do not give your consent, or you withdraw your consent, this may affect our ability to provide the insurance cover from which you benefit and may prevent us from providing cover for you or handling your claims. The way insurance works means that your information may be shared with, and used by, a number of third parties in the insurance sector for example, insurers, agents or brokers, reinsurers, loss adjusters, subcontractors, regulators, law enforcement agencies, fraud and crime prevention and detection agencies and compulsory insurance databases. We will only disclose your personal information in connection with the insurance cover that we provide and to the extent required or permitted by law. Where you provide us or your agent or broker with details about other people, you must provide this notice to them. You have rights in relation to the information we hold about you, including the right to access your information. If you wish to exercise your rights, discuss how we use your information, please in the first instance contact your agent or broker that arranged your insurance who will provide you with our contact details..

A statutory trust client bank account that 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. Also for this reason it is not possible for you to offset the refund against premiums owed on another policy. 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.

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.

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.
If you choose to enter in a finance arrangement, this 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.

Cancellation

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. 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, cancellation under this right must be in writing, prior to expiry of the 14-day cancellation period, to our usual office address.

Complaints

Our aim is always to provide our customers with a first-class service; however, we are aware that, occasionally, it is possible that we may fail to meet your expectations. If for any reason we have not met your expectations, let us know as soon as possible, by calling our main office telephone 0844 8466401, or write to Complaints Manager, Quote Us Insurance Services, 59 Whetley Lane, Bradford, BD8 9EE, or email complaints@quoteus.co.uk. If we are unable to resolve the issue to your satisfaction by the end of the next business day, 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.

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, South Quay Plaza, 183 Marsh Wall, London, E14 9SR. www.financial-ombudsman.org.uk

A full copy of our complaints 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 compulsory classes of insurance (such as motor insurance) is covered for 100% of a claim. Further information is available from the FSCS helpline on 0207 892 7300 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

Insurance Premium Tax (12%)

Your premium detailed in the policy will include IPT at the prevailing rate. Should the rate of IPT be amended by the Government, your premium will be amended by the insurer to reflect the change.
Some polices are subject to Value Added Tax (VAT) not IPT and should the rate of VAT be amended by the Government, your premium will be amended by the insurer to reflect the change.

Termination

You may cancel this agreement with us at any time. You must provide at least 30 days written notice of instructions. 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 together with an explanation if appropriate.

WARNING – CONSUMERS

WHERE THE MAIN PURPOSE OF THE CONTRACT IS FOR PRIVATE USE

Your duty to give information

When applying for or amending your insurance policy, we and / or your insurer will ask a number of questions to assess the risk prior to agreeing cover. It is your duty to ensure that you answer all questions raised by insurers or us honestly and reasonably. These questions are designed to enable us or the insurer to obtain a comprehensive picture of the nature of the risk to be insured, and only by asking such questions and receiving answers which are given honestly and with reasonable care, can we or the insurer be in a position to offer terms which are designed to meet your demands and needs. This reason why this is vital and extremely important is that if you fail to tell us or the insurer something when asked, or, if you answer carelessly or act deliberately or recklessly in making misrepresentations when answering questions, your policy may leave you with no insurance protection; insurers may not pay a part or all of your claim and may cancel your policy. You may find it difficult to re-arrange cover because you did not tell an insurer everything when asked, and you will have to disclose this fact when you reapply for insurance.

FAILURE TO ANSWER QUESTIONS HONESTLY AND REASONABLY, WHEN ASKED, MAY LEAVE YOU WITH NO COVER AND A CLAIM NOT PAID.

WARNING

Warranties and Conditions Precedent

Your policy contains a number of WARRANTIES and CONDITIONS PRECEDENT. These are horrible terms which you must comply with word for word, otherwise the insurer might not pay any claims and might cancel your policy from the start. Even if there is no connection between a breach of these terms and the cause of the loss.

Failure to comply with these terms may leave you with no insurance cover and your claim not being paid! An insurance warranty is not a good thing, it does not mean that it is a guarantee of something; it typically means that you must comply with terms in order that your insurance protection remains operative.

Conditions Precedent: Some conditions do impose a responsibility on you to have done something or completed something before a certain section of the policy will operate. If you do not do the thing stated, cover will not be in place.

FAILURE TO COMPLY MAY LEAVE YOU WITH NO COVER AND A CLAIM NOT PAID.

IMPORTANT – Warranties are not always referred to as such within a policy and schedule. They may be referred to as conditions, endorsements, special terms as well as warranties.
It is important that you look out for these and if you have any doubt about a particular statement, please ask us for advice.

FAILURE TO COMPLY WITH THESE MAY LEAVE YOU WITHOUT ANY COVER IN THE EVENT OF A CLAIM AND THE CLAIM MAY NOT BE PAID.

With the Insurance Act 2015 coming into force soon.

We have been making changes to our electronically traded products, our question sets and our trading platforms over recent months. We have been busy refreshing and enhancing all of our wordings, making them Insurance Act compliant in time for August 2016. With many brokers trading online this brings added complexity to the process of the customer and broker providing insurers with all the information they need to underwrite risks. We want to help make this as simple as possible. To do this, we’ve introduced a ‘Fair Presentation of Risk Guarantee’, which means that provided you answer all our questions and assumptions accurately, we will accept that as a fair presentation of the risk

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