0808 141 1244

Talk to us to help save yourself time & money

Howden Life & Health Limited have a number of trading styles including, Howden, National Assurance, Pol-Plan Life, and Forever Assured and offers insurance to meet the needs of a wide range of individuals and companies. Our Terms of Business are set out in this booklet and govern how we operate in our dealings with you. Please read it carefully and retain it for future reference.


About Us

Howden Life & Health Limited of Ageas House, The Square, Brockworth, GL3 4ZP is an independent intermediary authorised and regulated by the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA). Our Financial Services Register number is 176392. Our permitted business is advising, arranging and administering insurance. You can check this on the Financial Services Register by visiting the FCA’s website or by contacting the FCA on 0800 111 6768.


What we do

We act on your behalf, advising on and arranging insurance. We offer insurance policies from a range of insurers to provide a ‘personal and fair analysis of the market’ for key person cover, shareholder protection, relevant life, business loan protection, life insurance, private medical insurance, dental insurance, critical illness cover and income protection cover. Our personal recommendation of insurer and policy will be based on the insurer that most closely matches, in cover and price, the insurance needs that you tell us you have at the time we prepare the quotation.

Howden Life & Health is an independent insurance intermediary (a broker).


How we operate

Call Recording

For our joint protection, we may record telephone calls.


Treating customers fairly

Meeting the needs of our clients is at the heart of everything we do at Howden Life & Health. We always aspire to treat our clients fairly and to give advice and recommendations that meet your requirements. To do this we constantly review our processes and procedures to ensure we offer our clients the highest standards of advice and service. Our communications are designed to be clear and straightforward to understand and we aim to keep you informed of all developments with your insurance both before you buy and afterwards.


Cooling off period

You have the right to cancel any insurance policy that you buy from us. If you wish to cancel your insurance you should write to advise this, within 30 days of the date you received your policy documentation (14 days for Private Medical Insurance).


Changes to your policy

The appointed Group Secretary should notify us immediately of any changes in the details upon which your insurance was arranged.


Making a claim

All claims are processed by your insurer directly, please refer to your policy documents for your insurers instructions.

Upon request, we will guide you through what can often be a difficult and stressful time and help make certain the Insurer provides the responsive service you are entitled to expect.


Contacting You

We will usually contact you by email, phone or by post. By providing your email address and mobile phone number, you are agreeing to us communicating with you by email, SMS and phone. If you email a request to arrange insurance cover or to amend any details under an existing policy, insurance cover will not be in force until your Insurer has agreed to provide cover and we have confirmed this to you. You must take reasonable steps to ensure that email messages are complete and accurate, free of harmful viruses and secure, so that they cannot be altered in course of transmission.


Cancellation

If you decide to cancel your policy please contact us first, so that we can help you to determine the least expensive way to do this.

If you pay your premiums by direct debit, any money already paid at the time of cancellation will be used to clear the insurer’s charge. If the direct debit payment is insufficient to do this, you will need to contact the Insurer to discuss the balance.

Where you do not maintain direct debit payments or other instalment payments, your Insurers have the right to cancel your insurance policy.


Insurer security

We place your business with insurers whom we believe to be reliable and of good financial standing. However, we cannot be held liable if an Insurer that we recommend subsequently cannot meet its obligations. You are still responsible for paying any premium or part-premium due.


Premiums, fees and payments

We are paid a commission by the insurer for arranging the policy. This cost is automatically built in as a percentage of your insurance premiums along with the other costs of claims and policy administration. We are happy to tell you the amount of commission we earn upon request.

We do not handle client money. We never accept a cheque made out to us (unless it is in settlement of charges or disbursements for which we have agreed with you) or handle cash.


Tax

Howden Life & Health Limited are not tax advisers and will not be able to offer any form of tax advice.


P11D

Howden Life & Health Limited do not offer a P11D service. Assured Futures will only forward accounts, invoices, insurer provided P11D calculations to enable the employers to calculate their own P11D reports. The responsibility of P11D reporting shall remain the responsibility of the client.


Renewing your policy

Policy Renewal

For policies with a renewal date, we will contact you, to tell you the premium and terms applicable for the next period of insurance. We request that you instruct us with your wishes before the date on which your policy is due to expire. If we have not heard from you by this time, we will instruct your current Insurer to automatically renew your policy for continuity of cover, as long as you pay by direct debit and your Insurer is happy for the policy to continue. 

There are no 'days of grace' and it is your responsibility to ensure that your insurance remains valid and in force and that you have done nothing which might invalidate the insurance.

However your policy is renewed, you must remember to tell us of any changes that might affect your cover, (eg any significant change to the business such as: location, number of employees, business activity, banking information), before the date on which your policy is due to be renewed, otherwise your cover may become invalid.


Information about the Scheme

You have a have a duty of “fair presentation of the risk”.  This means that you must: -

  • Disclose to us and the insurers every material circumstance you know or ought to have known, this includes circumstances that can be revealed by a reasonable search of information available to you including information held within your organisation: for example your Human Resources records, employees and senior managers;
  • Provide the insurer with sufficient information to put a prudent insurer on notice that it needs to make further enquiries into those material circumstances.

A material circumstance are circumstances which may influence the insurers decision to cover a risk and/or the terms that are applied, for example: extensive periods of absence of employees, severe diagnosed medical conditions, excessive non-UK residency or travel etc. 

Once cover has been arranged you must notify us of any changes to the information previously provided. Failure to provide full and accurate information could invalidate your insurance and result in a claim being rejected.


Policy Documentation

The Group Secretary is responsible for ensuring all individuals covered under the policy are provided with information about the policy including a copy of any policy summary or insurance product information document.


Records and Documents

Our files are confidential. Unless you permit us, we will not share information on your insurance with anyone other than you and your legal representatives, the Insurer to whom you apply for insurance or any party as may be required for the proper performance of our or your insurers service to you, unless we are required to do so in order to meet our legal obligations under Statute.

For full details of how your data will be used by us, including information about your rights, can be found in our Privacy Policy.

If you have purchased a policy through an insurance comparison website, we will share your personal information with them in order to provide you with the quotations you have requested. All personal information will be held in strictest confidence and used only for the purposes for providing you the service requested.


Data Protection Legislation

We will obtain from you, personal information about individuals covered under the scheme to enable us to provide quotations and any insurance policy. For full details of how your data will be used by us, including information about yours and the individuals covered rights, can be found in our Privacy Policy.

We will abide by the stated principles of the Data Protection Act at all times. We are registered with the Information Commissioner as Data Controller and Processor. Details of the Data Protection Act can be viewed on the Information Commissioner’s website at www.ico.gov.uk .

An individual covered by the policy may request a copy of the personal data which we hold on them by writing to:

Data Protection Officer
Howden Life & HealthLimited, Ageas House, The Square, Brockworth, GL3 4ZP.

It is our policy to deal with the appointed Group Secretary of the policy and any previously: consented, named, invited employee who contacts us on the businesses behalf. If you would like someone else to deal with the policy on your behalf on a regular basis, please let us know. If at any time you would prefer us to deal only with the Group Secretary, please let us know.

Subject to your consent, we may use your personal data to inform you about other products and services that we feel may be of interest to you, via mail, telephone, email or other electronic messaging services. If you do not wish to receive marketing information from us by these methods or if you have any queries about how we use your information, then please let us know.


Other information

Financial Services Compensation Scheme

We subscribe to the Financial Services Compensation Scheme (FSCS). In the unlikely event that we cannot meet our obligations to you, you may be entitled to compensation from the FSCS. Eligibility for compensation from the FSCS depends on:

  • the circumstances of each claim and
  • the type of person or organisation making the claim

For most insurances, compensation of 90% of the claim is available, with no upper limit. Further information about compensation scheme arrangements is available from the FSCS at www.fscs.org.uk.


Applicable Law

All dealings with us are subject to English Law.


Credit Searches

Certain insurers may carry out credit searches in the course of processing your quotation or application for insurance.


Making a complaint

We work hard to provide our clients with a first-class service. If you are not happy with any aspect of the service you have received, we would like to know and to do all we can to resolve the situation. In the first instance, please contact the team, who will try to resolve matters for you. If you are still unhappy with the stance taken, please write to:

Managing Director, Howden Life & HealthLimited, Ageas House, The Square, Brockworth, GL3 4ZP, who will investigate and make every effort to settle the issue for you.

who will investigate and make every effort to settle the issue for you.

If after this you feel that the complaint remains unresolved, you may be entitled to refer it to the Financial Services Ombudsman.


Third party rights

These Terms of Business are enforceable only by those who have had direct dealings with us and are not enforceable by any third party, whether under the Contracts (Rights of Third Parties) Act 1999 or otherwise.


Notes

The headings in these terms of business are for convenience only and shall not affect their interpretation. These terms of business shall be governed by and construed in accordance with English law. If any of the provisions of these terms of business are held to be invalid or unenforceable in the whole or in part the validity of the other provisions shall not be affected thereby. Our staff are not authorised to vary these terms of business, but they may be varied by us in writing from time.

 

 

 

Howden Life & Health, the new name for Assured Futures

On November 1st 2023, Assured Futures completed its merger with Howden. For Assured Futures clients, the service remains the same, via your usual contacts. Assured Futures phone numbers and email addresses will continue to work.

About the merger trending_flat
Howden Insurance