Not upheld: Travel / life insurance claim disputes complaint against Tradex Insurance Company Limited

Decision detail

Summary

Ms P and Mr W complained that Tradex Insurance unfairly removed Ms P from their motor insurance policy and declined a claim following a collision in November 2023. Tradex had declined the claim and removed Ms P because she had misrepresented her employment status when the policy was taken out in September 2023, stating she was employed as a management consultant when she was actually unemployed following recent redundancy. The ombudsman found that Ms P made a qualifying misrepresentation under the Consumer Insurance (Disclosure and Representations) Act 2012, as the questions asked were clear, she failed to take reasonable care, and Tradex's underwriting criteria showed it would not have offered cover with Ms P as a named driver had it known she was unemployed. The complaint was not upheld, and the ombudsman found the £300 compensation already offered by Tradex for customer service failures to be sufficient.

The Ombudsman's reasoning

The ombudsman found that Ms P made a misrepresentation by stating she was employed when she was actually unemployed at the time of policy inception. The questions asked were clear enough that Ms P failed to take reasonable care not to make the misrepresentation. Tradex provided evidence that it would not have offered cover with Ms P as a named driver had it known of her unemployment status, constituting a qualifying misrepresentation under CIDRA. Therefore, Tradex was entitled to treat the policy as if it had been provided without Ms P as a named driver and to decline the claim. Employment status is not a protected characteristic under The Equality Act, so the decision does not constitute unlawful discrimination.

How this compares

Source

Read the original decision on the Financial Ombudsman Service website