[*]An insurance company will not change the correspondence address on your record. For all they know, you could have been taking out the policy to cover an investment property mortgage.
I'm not suggesting that they would have changed the address by default. I am suggesting that it would have been a good idea for them to ask the question at some stage during the selling process like 'will you be moving house as part of this transaction?'.
[*]It is the customer's responsibility to pay their premium when due in order to ensure cover is continued. Reminders are sent as a courtesy, but they do not change the contractual obligation on the customer to pay the premium on time. In other words, reminders of late premiums are entirely optional.
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I'm just posting these because there's a misconception that if a life insurance company doesn't give you adequate warning, they can't take you off cover. Warnings and reminders are discretionary and are not part of the contract. If you decide to go down the formal complaint route, I suspect that this will be what the reply will be.
I'm sure you are right in terms of the small print, but I have to ask the question - is this fair? is this reasonable? Is it reasonable for a company to make a major financial decision by writing 3 unregistered letters to a 19 year old address, having missed the opportunities to check for a change of address as part of the sales process
That said, I do agree that in 2014, it wouldn't be terribly difficult for Caledonian Life to have a more robust system for dealing with premium collections. How difficult would it be to incorporate a question on an application form "Do you want us to change the address after the policy issues?" and a follow-up procedure thereafter? How difficult would it be to gather e-mail addresses or mobile phone numbers as an alternative or supplementary method of issuing reminders?
Fully agree.
The reason why life companies will seek evidence of health after a policy has gone off risk is to protect themselves from the following scenario: Joe Bloggs has a life insurance policy; he voluntarily cancels it to save a few bob; a year later he gets bad news from a doctor - he's diagnosed with a terminal illness; he goes back to the insurance company and asks if he can revive his old policy that he had cancelled previously.
I wouldn't have a particular problem if they asked 'has your health changed since the payment was missed'. What they actually asked is 'has your health changed in 19 years', which has nothing to do with the missed payment. It is opportunistic and predatory.
- A copy of late payment notices and lapse warnings will usually be sent to the broker/agent. In this instance, was the agent for the policy Danske themselves?
They've given me the name of the broker on record, which is not a name I recognise at all. I can only assume it was a broker that acted for Danske/NIB at the time. I'm pretty sure I've never had any direct dealing with them.
- I think you would have a valid complaint against Danske for bouncing the Direct Debit with no valid reason.
You're probably right, unless it turns out that the insurer's direct debit request was not SEPA compliant.
As Liam said, it could have been for an investment property or changing your current cover. Plenty of people take out mortgage protection as their primary life cover plan.
Maybe, though I'd have thought that most of the people taking out cover are taking out residential mortgages - certainly enough of them are taking out residential mortgages to make it worth while asking a question - are you moving house as part of this transaction?
With thousands of customers, it would be too expensive for an insurance company to proactively ensure that the client addresses are up to date.
Absolutely not - if the insurer is going to base major decisions by sending out letters to this address, then they absolutely need to take reasonable steps to keep their database up to date. They didn't do this.
I can't see how you have a case against the insurer in this case. It's the banks fault. See if the insurer will put you back on cover if the bank admit fault to cancelling your DDM without permission. Then go after the bank regardless.
Thanks for the suggestion.
Had it anything to do with SEPA being introduced which caused a lot of D/D payments to get missed. Our cas insurenace was missed due to this but the bank sorted it out for us.
This is a very interesting point. I wonder if the insurer updated their systems to ensure their submission was SEPA compliant? From memory, SEPA issues were the reason quoted by Danske for rejecting the An Post TV Licence charge last November.
Is there any good source of information that can help me understand exactly what the insurer should have submitted and exactly what Danske could/should have sent back?