Terms of business

County Insurance Consultants Ltd, trading as Heath & Blackshaw, Insure Taxi, Insure Courier, Insurance4Your – registered in England and Wales number 4787941. Registered address: 4 George House, Princes Court, Beam Heath Way, Nantwich, CW5 6GD. We act as an independent insurance intermediary and are authorised and regulated by the Financial Services Authority, Number 305560, in the arranging and selling of General Insurance policies. You may check our authorised status by visiting the FSA website @ www.fsa.gov.co.uk or by calling them on 0845 606 1234.

Our Service – In arranging insurance for our customers, we act as an independent intermediary. We will advise and make a recommendation for you after we have assessed your needs and help you with any ongoing changes you have to make. If you arrange your insurance through us via our website we are unable to assess some of your needs due to the nature of the medium, as a result the quotation and policy has been provided on a non advised basis. We will also assist you wherever possible in making a claim.

Disclosure – It is your responsibility to provide complete and accurate information to insurers when taking out your insurance policy, throughout the life of your policy and when you renew the policy. Failure to disclose information pertaining to your insurance, or any inaccuracies in information given, could result in your policy being invalid or cover not operating fully.

It is therefore very important that you ensure that all statements you make on proposal forms, claim forms and other documents are full and accurate. If the form is completed on your behalf, you should check all the answers shown to the relevant questions are true and accurate before signing the document.

You are reminded that it is an offence under the road traffic act to make any false statements or to withhold any relevant information to obtain a certificate of motor insurance.

You are advised to keep copies of any correspondence you send to us or direct to your insurers.

If you are in any doubt about whether information is material, you should disclose it.

Confidentiality and Data Protection – All personal and sensitive information about our customers is treated as private and confidential.

We will only use and disclose the information we have about a customer, in the normal course of arranging and administering their insurances and will not disclose any information to any other parties without their consent. Unless we are notified of any changes by you, we will assume that the personal and sensitive information we hold on you is correct and continue to use this to provide quotations when the policy falls due for renewal or as and when the risk requires review.

“If you wish to pay your premium by instalments your details will be passed to our third party instalment provider. They will send you a welcome pack detailing their full terms and conditions. If you have questions about your instalments you should contact them. On renewal of your policy we will continue to pass your details to them, unless you instruct us otherwise.”

Under the Data Protection Act 1998, individuals have a right to see personal information about them held in our records. A charge may be made for this service. If you wish to exercise this right, or have any related queries, you should write to us at the above address.

Motor and Home Insurance Anti-Fraud Registers – Insurers share information with each other via the Claims Underwriting Exchange register and motor insurance anti-fraud and theft register to aid the prevention of fraudulent claims.

In the event of a claim, the information you supply on the claim form together with any other information relating to the claim will be put on the registers.

Motor Insurance Information Centre – Insurers are legally required to provide details of all motor insurance policies to the MIIC. The information describing your insurance cover will be added to the Motor Insurance Database (MID) to which the police and other government agencies have access. This helps with the pursuance of claims following accidents and aids the detection of those who are in the contravention of the law by not taking out insurance.

Use for Marketing Purposes – We may use information held about you to provide information about other products and services which we feel may be of interest to you. We may do this by telephone, email, post or other means.

You may exercise your right to give notice to stop data being processed for marketing purposes by contacting us at any time. Please do this in writing.

Introducer Arrangements – A third party may have introduced you to us and for this the introducer may be paid a fee by us. Similarly we may, with your consent, introduce you to other third parties, for which the third party may pay a fee to us.

Claims – We may have no authority to handle claims on behalf of insurers. In the event of an incident occurring, which may give rise to a claim under your policy you should notify your insurer using the relevant claims help line numbers given to you.

Alternatively you may contact us on our telephone number and we will then on receipt of notification of an incident, which may give rise to a claim under your policy, inform the insurer as soon as is reasonably practical and in any circumstances no later than seven days from the day of receipt.

We shall use our best endeavours when acting on your behalf in relation to a claim, to handle all elements of the claim in due care, skill and diligence.

If we consider it to be in your interests, then we may pass data held by us to a third party to deal with a claim on your/our behalf.

Complaints – It is our intention to provide you with the very highest level of customer service at all times. If there are occasions where we do no meet these standards then please do let us know by contacting our Operations Director Mrs Lesley Garratt in writing, telephone or email.

If you are still not happy with the outcome after you have been in contact with ourselves and we have dealt with your complaint, then you can contact the Financial Ombudsman Service, South Quay Plaza, 183 Marsh Wall, London, E14 9SR. Telephone: 0207 676 1000.

We are covered by the Financial Services Compensation Scheme. You may be entitled to compensation from the scheme if we cannot meet our obligations. This depends on the type of business and the circumstances of the claim. Insurance advising and arranging is covered for 100% of the first £2000 and 90% of the remainder of the claim, without any upper limit. For compulsory classes of insurance, insurance advising and arranging is covered for 100% of the claim, without any upper limit. Further information about compensation scheme arrangements is available from the FSCS on 0207 892 7300 or by visiting, www.fscs.org.uk.

Treating you fairly – We always aim to treat you fairly. We consider carefully the products we offer and select them with our customers in mind. We strive to make sure you’re not misled and that information we provide is clear and understandable.

We aim to put things right if we make a mistake and believe our complaints process is fair and accessible. We want you to be confident when dealing with us.

Compliments – It is always nice to hear when a member of our team has done a good job and you feel someone has done something that deserves that extra recognition.

Cancellation Rights – The contract is the agreement between you and us for the insurance mediation service that we provide to you in respect of your insurance requirements.

Once you have entered into the contract with us, as a retail customer you are entitled to a period of reflection during which you may decide whether to proceed with the purchase of the contract. The duration of this cooling off period is 14 days and commences from either:-

The day of conclusion of the contract, or the day on which you receive the full terms of the contract detailing the full contractual terms, conditions and information for the contract, whichever is the later.

To cancel the contract within the cooling off period, please write to us returning all the documents issued. If you do cancel this contract within the cooling off period, you will be liable for the insurer’s time on risk charge and our £35 administration charge. If a charge has been made for setting up the policy this is non refundable. With the exclusion of any policy written on a minimum and deposit basis and may not apply if your policy is on a commercial basis.

This contract can be cancelled at any time by either party in writing giving 5 days notice. If you wish to give notice of cancellation, please write to us. If we wish to cancel this contract, we shall write to you at the last known address we have for you on our records. Please note that on cancellation of this contract outside of what is commonly known as the cooling off period (the first 14 days), we will retain up to 20% of the return premium (minimum £30) given from your insurer, and any other charges we have made in relation to your policy.

Our right to cancel your insurance – if you choose to pay by direct debit or any other credit facility you will be provided with a Consumer Credit Agreement or Instalment agreement to sign. You are reminded that it is a term of both agreements that you authorise us, as your agent, to instruct the insurers to cancel your insurance if any direct debit or instalment payment, or any other amount due under those agreements is in arrears and not paid on time.

Payment methods – We normally accept payments by cash, guaranteed cheque or all the major credit/debit cards.

You may wish to spread your payments through Insurers instalment schemes, a credit scheme with a third party finance provider, or a facility, which we have arranged for you. We will give you full details of your payment options when we discuss your insurance in details.

Premiums and Financial Aspects – In order to be able to offer you credit facilities we are registered under the consumer credit act and our Licence Number is 543971. This enables us to hold agreements with Insurers or arrange credit with third party credit providers which we may offer you credit via.

Please note if you are paying your policy by instalments, in the event of a claim the balance under that agreement will become due and acceptance of these terms of business give us your authority to deduct this from any settlement amount that is resultant from the claim.

Risk Transfer – Premiums that we collect from you are held in an insurance broking bank account specifically used for this purpose of holding client premiums. By virtue of agreements we hold with Insurers, we collect premiums as agents for most of the Insurers. Therefore, once we have collected premiums from you, under the agreements we have with insurers, those premiums are treated as having been paid to the insurer.

Client money segregation (non – statutory trust) – Premiums that we collect from you will be segregated into and held in a non-statutory client money bank account, co-mingled with other client money, allowing us to make advances of credit where necessary. The client money bank account is set up as a trust governed by FSA rules.

Earning Interest on Insurance Broking Account – We hold premiums as disclosed above under FSA Regulations and are required to advise you that we may earn interest from the money held in our insurance broking account. This interest is paid into our business account and used for the running of our business.

Customer Money Passed to Another Person – In accordance with FSA regulations, we have to inform you that in managing and/or arranging your insurance requirements, we may transfer money that you have paid to us in payment of any insurance premium to another insurance intermediary. We may place money with other brokers.

Governing Law – This agreement shall be governed by the laws of England and Wales and the parties agree herewith that any dispute arising out of it shall be subject to the (non-) exclusive jurisdiction of the English courts.

At renewal – Shortly before renewal, we will try to speak to you by phone about your renewal requirements. If we do not manage to contact you, then we will send you a letter setting out our renewal quote. We will ask you at that time to contact us. If you are paying for your policy by direct debit or by a credit scheme with a third party provider, and you are happy with your renewal quote, there will be nothing further for you to arrange. The payments will continue automatically and your new payments will be debited in the usual way.

Also, if you are paying by direct debit or by a credit scheme we may (but accept no responsibility for) renew your policy automatically if, prior to renewal date contact between us has not been made or you have failed to confirm whether or not you wish to proceed. We will do this for your protection.

We derive our earnings from a mixture of commission and professional fees, which apply for transactions throughout the policy term. 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. For accounting purposes we will take commission due to us upon receipt of your premium unless our terms of business with the provider specifies otherwise.

Wholesale replacement schemes where we earn reduced or no commission – On the placement of new business and renewals from time to time in order to get you the most competitive terms we may have to look at the wholesale schemes that are not placed directly with an insurer. When this is the case we will earn a reduced amount or no commission, in order to cover our costs when using these schemes we may make a charge in addition to any commission paid this will not exceed a maximum of 45% of the premium. The amount of any charge on top of the premium will always be disclosed to you prior to inception of any policy.

It is not economic or practical to issue refund cheques of small amounts, accordingly, where a transaction would result in a refund to you from us of less than £5 this nominal amount will be retained by us as an additional service charge.

Our service charges when wholesale replacement does not apply:-
New Business – £25 or a Maximum 30% of the premium
Mid-term Adjustments – £25
Renewals – £25 or a Maximum 30% of the premium
Legal Expenses – £25
Lost Documents – £10
Direct debit defaults – £25
Bounced cheques – £25

Cancellation of policy – deduction of up to 20% from your return premium to cover administration costs. (Minimum £30)

In certain exceptional circumstances we may vary the above charges but the specific charge and purpose of any additional charges will always be advised to you in advance.

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