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

Decision detail

Summary

Mr S complained that One Insurance Limited unreasonably voided his motor insurance policy after discovering he had failed to disclose a non-motoring criminal conviction when taking out the policy in January 2025. One Insurance discovered the conviction while validating a claim Mr S made in April 2024 for a motor incident. The ombudsman found that One Insurance clearly asked about non-motoring convictions through an aggregator website, broker assumptions, and the Statement of Fact, and that Mr S ought to have understood this requirement. Although the ombudsman accepted Mr S made a mistake rather than acting deliberately or recklessly, the Insurance Act 2015 permits insurers to void policies from inception when a policyholder fails to make a fair presentation of risk and the insurer would not have offered cover on any terms. The ombudsman rejected arguments about disproportionality and Mr S's claimed impairments, finding One Insurance acted fairly and reasonably.

The Ombudsman's reasoning

The ombudsman applied the Insurance Act 2015, which requires policyholders to make a fair presentation of risk by disclosing all material information they know or ought to know. The ombudsman found that One Insurance clearly asked about non-motoring convictions through multiple channels, and Mr S ought to have understood this requirement despite his claim of confusion with motor-related convictions. Since One Insurance would not have offered cover on any terms had they known of the conviction, this constituted a qualifying breach. The ombudsman accepted that the breach was not deliberate or reckless (Mr S made a mistake), so One Insurance was entitled under the Act to void the policy from inception and decline the claim. The ombudsman rejected arguments about disproportionality and Mr S's impairments, finding that the Act permits this remedy.

How this compares

Source

Read the original decision on the Financial Ombudsman Service website