Not upheld: Other regulated complaint complaint against Quilter Mortgage Planning Limited

Decision detail

Summary

Mr S complained that Quilter Mortgage Planning Limited failed to notice his income protection policy was worthless when it took over as his financial adviser in 2020. The policy, sold in 2018 by a previous adviser, would not pay out because Mr S was not taking income from his limited company. The previous adviser had already acknowledged in 2019 it should have recommended cancelling the policy and provided a refund. Mr S expected Quilter to review his whole financial situation including the income protection policies. However, the ombudsman found that Quilter only reviewed Mr S's pension arrangements and there was no evidence of income protection policy reviews or that Mr S raised this issue during multiple meetings from 2019 to 2023. The complaint was not upheld as Quilter was not obligated to review the entire financial situation and Mr S did not request a review of his protection policies until 2024.

The Ombudsman's reasoning

The ombudsman found that Quilter was not obligated to review Mr S's entire financial situation simply because the previous adviser had done so. The evidence showed that Quilter only reviewed pension arrangements and there was no indication in the meeting summaries or from Mr S's actions that income protection policies were discussed or that Mr S raised concerns about them. Critically, Mr S did not inform Quilter that he wanted his income protection policies reviewed until 2024, despite multiple opportunities to do so during the reviews from 2019 to 2023. The ombudsman concluded that Quilter acted appropriately when Mr S finally raised the issue in June 2024.

How this compares

Source

Read the original decision on the Financial Ombudsman Service website