Insurance Terms of Business

1. Regulation

We, Blinc-UK Ltd, whose registered office is at Chancery House, 3 Hatchlands Road, Redhill, Surrey, RH1 6AA, are an appointed representative of Brian Johnston & Co (Insurance Brokers) Ltd, who are authorised and regulated by the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) to sell general insurance products. You can check this on the FCA’s register by visiting register.fca.org.uk or by contacting the FCA on 0800 111 6768. Brian Johnston & Co (Insurance Brokers) Ltd’s Firm Reference Number is 307689.

We are an insurance intermediary.

Our service to you. You will not receive advice or a recommendation from us. We may ask you some questions to narrow down the selection of products that we will provide details on. As we provide a non-advised service you will need to make your own choice about how to proceed.

Our service includes arranging your insurance cover with insurers to meet your requirements and helping you with any ongoing changes you have to make.

2. The capacity in which we are acting

• Sourcing a suitable policy: we act as your agent.
• Placing the insurance: we act as your agent.
• In the event of a claim: we act as your agent, and we act as agent of the insurer.

3. How we made our selection

To assess the insurance product that most suits your needs, we may use another intermediary to help place your business.

We only offer cover from a single insurer for each class of insurance.

4. Disclosure of information: consumers

It is important that you understand that any information, statements or answers made by you to us, or your insurer, are your responsibility. You must take reasonable care not to make misrepresentations when answering an insurer’s questions. If you are careless in answering the insurer’s questions or deliberately make a misrepresentation, this may render the insurance void from inception (the start of the contract) and enable the insurer to repudiate liability (entitle the insurer not to pay your claims). You are advised to keep copies of documentation sent to or received from us for your own protection. Please do consult us if you are in doubt on any aspect. The requirement for correct information not only applies at commencement and renewal of your policy, but also at any time during the period of insurance.

5. Disclosure of information: commercial customers

Where the insurance is arranged wholly or mainly for the purposes of your trade, business or profession then you 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 information that can be revealed by a reasonable search of information available to you, including information held within your organisation and by its 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 is a circumstance which may influence the insurer’s decision to cover a risk and/or the terms that are applied. Examples of material circumstances include:

• Landlord’s insurance: failing to disclose that the property has been susceptible to flooding or has been the subject of an arson attack.
• Rent protection: failing to obtain positive reference checks on tenants or not documenting the terms of the tenancy agreement.

This requirement not only applies at commencement and renewal of the policy but also at any time during the period of insurance.

6. Awareness of policy terms

When a policy is issued, you are strongly advised to read it carefully, as it is that document, the schedule and any certificate of insurance that details the cover that you have in place. If you are in doubt over any of the policy terms and conditions, please seek our advice promptly.

7. Charges and fees

We will not charge you a fee for arranging, amending, renewing or cancelling your insurance policy.

8. Remuneration disclosure

We receive commission from insurers as a percentage of the annual premium.

9. Commission disclosure: commercial customers

You are entitled at any time to request information regarding any commission which we may have received as a result of placing your insurance business.

10. Auto renewal

For your own protection your policy will automatically renew unless you have opted out of the auto-renew facility. You can stop your policy automatically renewing at any time, by telephone, post or email. If you cancel this facility your insurance will then expire on the renewal date unless you give us instructions to renew your policy.

11. Client money

The FCA rules are designed to protect you in the event that an insurance intermediary fails or is unable to transfer any premium money it has received from you to the insurer, or any claims or return premium monies that it has received from the insurer to you.

We are governed by strict rules pertaining to client money, set down by the FCA. Where we hold monies in a client bank account, we may earn interest on monies held, which will be retained by us. We do not hold monies on behalf of clients or insurers. All premiums are paid direct to the insurer.

12. Customer protection information

It is our intention to provide you with a high level of customer service at all times. If there are occasions when we do not meet your standards, please contact the Compliance Officer at Brian Johnston & Co (Insurance Brokers) Ltd by telephone on 01737 768151, by email to enquiries@bjins.co.uk or in writing to Brian Johnston & Co (Insurance Brokers) Ltd, 1-3 Linkfield Corner, Redhill, Surrey, RH1 1BL, who will take details of your concerns. We will acknowledge your complaint promptly in writing and do our best to resolve the problem quickly, keeping you informed of progress and the measures being taken. In the unlikely event that we have not resolved the complaint within 8 weeks we will write again to explain the reasons and advise when we expect to be able to do so.

If we cannot satisfy your complaint, you may be entitled to refer it to the Financial Ombudsman Service, and we will provide you with information about their service. For more information visit financial-ombudsman.org.uk.

A full version of our complaints handling procedure is available on request.

13. Cooling-off period

We will give you enough information and help so you can make an informed decision before you make a final commitment to buy your insurance policy. However, you will have fourteen days to change your mind and cancel the insurance contract from the date you receive the policy documentation. This only applies to consumers.