Client Agreement – How we are regulated
KBIS Limited, trading as KBIS British Equestrian Insurance, 6th Floor, One America Square, 17 Crosswall, London, EC3N 2LB.
Telephone: 0345 230 2323, Fax: 01635 785111, Email: ask@kbis.co.uk.
The Regulator
The Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) is an independent watchdog that regulates financial services.
Our Financial Services Register number is 300861 and you can check our status and permissions at https://register.fca.org.uk/ or by contacting the FCA on 0800 111 6768.
Our Activities
The FCA has authorised us to advise, arrange, deal in and assist with the placing and administration of all types of General Insurance policies and Pure Protection policies.
Our Service
We are an intermediary and act as agent of insurer. We have in place management controls to deal with any conflicts of interest that might arise.
We also act on behalf of insurers when collecting premiums under risk transfer (See “Money” section).
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 information only, you will need to make your own choice as we will not provide you with any advice or specific recommendations.
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.
Our Product Selection (Single Insurer)
We only offer this product from one insurer and so do not approach other providers.
Claims Notification
In the event of a claim or possible claim, you must make notification as per your policy wording. Your policy wording will be provided to you with your policy and is also available from our website at https://www.kbis.co.uk/. If you are in any doubt as to whether you need to make notification of a claim or possible claim or you are unsure of the requirements of your policy wording please contact KBIS British Equestrian Insurance by calling 0345 230 2323, by emailing ask@kbis.co.uk or write to KBIS British Equestrian Insurance, Cullimore House, Peasemore, Newbury, Berkshire, RG20 7JN. You can also get in touch by phone, email or post to request a copy of your policy wording.
Failure to comply with all claims notification requirements stipulated in the full policy wording may invalidate your insurance.
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:
A risk transfer insurer bank account in accordance with our agreements with Insurance Companies that transfer the risk of money we receive from customers to them, these agreements deem any money you pay to us, to be received by them and they will bear the risk of any losses in the event that our firm becomes insolvent. This includes claims money or premium refunds we receive prior to being paid to you.
By holding your money in this way it 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.
Our Remuneration
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. Our preferred provider of premium finance is Premium Credit Limited and this is the only provider we will approach. However, whilst we may recommend a provider to you , you remain free to make your own choice of premium finance provider and insurer’s own credit facilities may be available to you.
We may also receive a commission or fee for passing introductions to other professional firms.
On request we will be pleased to provide information about any remuneration and other earnings received by us in the handling of your insurances.In addition, we may also charge you a fee for arranging your insurance and full details will be provided to you at outset. We may also charge a fee for any amendment to your insurance policy including cancellation.
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, 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.
It is important that you read the finance agreement that is sent to you before you agree to enter into such an agreement.
We do not charge any fees to you for introducing you to a credit provider.
If you are a consumer as defined under the Consumer Credit Act, you will have the benefit of a 14 day cooling off period.
Please Note: Your policy cover will cease if you fail to keep up payments on an instalment agreement or premium finance facility related to it.
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. 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 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 0345 230 2323, or write to Elizabeth Prest, KBIS Limited, Cullimore House, Peasmore, Newbury, Berkshire, RG20 7JN or email ask@kbis.co.uk.
If we are unable to resolve the issue to your satisfaction within 3 working days, 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 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 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.
Data Protection
This is a summary of how we use relevant information about you to arrange and administer your insurance. This information includes details such as your name, address and contact details and other information that we collect about you in connection with arranging and administering your insurance. This information may also include more sensitive details such as information about your health and any criminal convictions you may have and other sensitive information. Our full privacy statement can be found on our website www.srinsurancesolutions.co.uk, or can be provided on request. You should review our privacy statement to ensure that you understand how we use data and your rights in respect of that data.
We will process any personal information we obtain in the course of providing our services in accordance with Data Protection Law and we have policies and procedures in place to protect and manage that information. We treat all
information provided by our clients as private and confidential and we will always work to ensure that personal data is processed lawfully, fairly and in a transparent manner and in compliance with Data Protection Law. This may require us to enter into other written agreements with you to enable us to comply with Data Protection Law.
Personal data that we collect will only be disclosed in the normal course of arranging and administering your insurance. We will however need to use and disclose information provided by our clients which may include personal and sensitive personal data in order to obtain insurance quotations and in the course of arranging, placing or administering insurance. This may involve passing information on to insurer(s), other intermediaries and other product or service providers which supply us with business and compliance support in
relation to such insurance. We may also need to pass such information on to industry regulators, auditors or in the event that the information is requested by a court of competent jurisdiction. The use and disclosure of your personal data by various insurance market participants such as intermediaries, insurers and reinsurers is further explained in The Lloyd’s and London Insurance Market Core Information Notice. Our core uses and disclosures are consistent with this notice and we recommend that you review this document which can be accessed via the link in our privacy notice.
Depending on the circumstances or nature of the insurance we may need to transfer personal data out of the jurisdiction of the European Economic Area. If this is necessary we will always ensure that your data is protected as required by Data Protection Law.
We may use your data for research, statistical analysis and crime prevention including the investigation of fraud. Sometimes we will also contact you or pass your details to other companies associated with us in order to promote
products or services which may be of interest to you. We will only do this however in accordance with our obligations under Data Protection Law.
In some circumstances, we will need to pass information about you on to credit reference agencies and premium finance providers in connection with the assessment of your financial standing generally and in particular where you have requested a premium instalment plan. This may include details of your payment record to us.
Where using personal data relies on your consent, we will obtain that consent or ensure that the consent is obtained from you in accordance with Data Protection Law. Where this is the case, you will be entitled to withdraw that consent. That may mean however that we are unable to arrange, place or administer your insurance properly.
In some cases you will have the right to ask us to stop using your personal data, to tell us that you no longer want to receive information from us, to ask us to correct information we have about you or to ask us for the information we hold about you. Full details of your rights under Data Protection Law and how to enforce those rights are set out in our privacy statement on our website.
If at any time you want us, or any company associated with us, to cease processing any personal data or sensitive personal data we hold about you, or to cease contacting you about products and services, you should write to our
Compliance Officer.
“Data Protection Law” means all applicable statutes and regulations in any jurisdiction pertaining to the processing of Personal Data, including but not limited to the privacy and security of Personal Data.
Duty of disclosure
Unless you are a Consumer ( that is, any natural person who is acting for purposes which are outside his trade or profession), you must disclose to insurers, before the setting up or renewal of your insurance policy is concluded, anything that might influence the judgement of an insurer in fixing the premium, setting the terms or determining whether they would take the risk. If you are uncertain whether anything is material, you should disclose it.
In order to identify what must be disclosed, you are obliged to carry out a reasonable search before presenting the risk to insurers. This includes (but is not limited to) consulting with all senior managers. A senior manager is anyone who plays a significant role in the making of decisions about how your activities are to be managed or organised, regardless of whether or not that individual is a member of your board or is formally in a management role. You must also consult with anyone who has particular knowledge about the risk to be insured.
If you deliberately or recklessly (i.e. without care) fail to comply with your obligations to present the risk fairly, insurers may avoid the policy. This means they can retain all premiums and treat the policy as if it never exist and refuse to make any claims payments. You could also be obliged to repay any claims payments that had already been made.
If you fail to present the risk fairly, but your failure was neither deliberate nor reckless, insurer’s response will depend upon what would have happened if you had complied with your obligations:
a) if insurers would not have provided the policy, they may treat the policy as if it never existed, refuse to make any claims payments and demand the return of any claims payments already made. However, insurers would have to return any premium payments already made;
b) if insurers would have provided the policy but on different terms, the policy will remain in force but will be treated as if those different terms applied from the start of the policy. This could result in a claim not being met in part or in full;
c) if insurers would have provided the policy but charged a higher premium, insurers may reduce any payment in proportion to the difference between the premium charged and the premium that would have been charged if you had fairly presented the risk. This could result in a significant reduction to the amount of any payment under the policy.
All statements and facts disclosed on proposal forms, statement of facts, claim forms and other documents should be full, true and accurate and must be given after undertaking a reasonable search, including consulting with your senior management. It is your responsibility to make sure that the information to be submitted to the insurer is presented in a way that the insurer will find reasonably clear and accessible. Where a large amount of information is provided you will need to ensure that it is organised in a structured way with appropriate indexing and signposting to enable the insurer to navigate to what is important.
Where you are a Consumer, you must take care to answer all questions fully and accurately. In other words, all information provided to the insurer must be complete and accurate and all questions must be answered honestly and to the best of you knowledge. Failure to provide accurate and up to date information may invalidate the insurance policy and mean that a claim may not be paid. A failure to comply with a request to confirm or clarify information previously provided is also capable of being a misrepresentation and could invalidate the insurance policy. Once an insurance policy has been arranged and has incepted, any changes to the information that has been provided to insurers must be notified as soon as possible as the insurance policy may include a requirement to do so and failure to notify such information may invalidate the insurance policy.
Bullying and Harassment of KBIS Limited Employees
We appreciate that dealing with insurance in general and making a claim in particular can be a very stressful experience. Our aim is to make sure we have highly trained staff who understand these concerns and work very hard to provide the best possible service. We realise that insurance claims can be complex and may require information to be supplied by several parties (e.g. vets, riders and livery yard owners etc.) and whilst KBIS Ltd will assist, it is the responsibility of the policy holder to arrange and collate the required documentation.
If the policy holder becomes rude or abusive over the phone or attempts to bully or harass our staff, it is very unpleasant for the member of staff who is just trying to do their job to the best of their ability. It is also extremely unproductive. When this happens the following procedure will be enforced:
- Our member of staff will calmly point out the situation and ask the policy holder to stop being rude or abusive.
- If the policy holder continues to be rude or abusive to our staff they will not continue the conversation and offer to pass the policy holder on to a Manager or request that they call back after a cooling off period.
- Following the cooling off period, we will resume communication with the policy holder.
- If the policy holder continues to be rude or abusive to our staff we will decline all direct phone communication with the policy holder and require that all further communication is either carried out by a representative of the policy holder or by email.
Before we decline all further direct phone communication we will give the policy holder the option to speak to a senior Director of the company. It may be necessary for the Director to call back at a later time. This procedure does not affect the policy holder’s right to make a complaint against us or to take that complaint to the Financial Ombudsmen Service.
Third Party (Rights Against Insurers) Act 2010
Where an insured becomes insolvent and has incurred a liability to a third party, the third party may be entitled under the Third Party (Rights Against Insurers) Act 2010 (‘the Act’) to make a claim against the relevant insurer directly.
Pursuant to this right the third party will be entitled under the Act to obtain policy information from any party it believes holds that information. That party has twenty-eight days in which to comply with the request for information. Where we receive a request under the terms of the Act we will contact you and discuss the request before releasing any information. If we are unable to make contact with you we will not be in breach of our duty of confidentiality to you by releasing information in response to such request, even where it transpires that you are not insolvent, nor have you incurred a liability to the third party, provided we have made reasonable efforts to establish the facts.