Swiftcover bans housewives, unemployed, retired?

timswf

Has anyone else had this crazy renewal email from Swiftcover which seems to say that the occupation "housewife" is a business they will not offer cover? Same for unemployed and retired.. Rgds tim

"There may have been some changes to our policy that affect you; your premium and policy excesses may have changed along with certain terms and conditions. In particular:-

If your occupation, as the policyholder, is "Estate Agent" then the entitlement to Drive Other Cars will be removed.

If you have chosen business use for you and your spouse or partner, do be advised that we no longer provide business use cover to any driver that has an occupation of: retired; unemployed; housewife; househusband; student; estate agent."

cogito

Why is this a problem? If you don't work, why would you need anything other than social domestic and pleasure?

maemaesmummy

Yes I agree the occupations listed should not require business use so no probs there except estate agent perhaps...

but then with thing as they are dont know any EAs that are actually doing any business!!

milkybars

They've changed their tune... I had quite a long winded email conversation with them when I was a student a few years ago. They were insisting that driving to my university was a commute but technically I was full time education/not employed. I think they've seen the light.

The only people worse off will be the estate agents. I see no reason for the unemployed, students or housepeople (how very PC) to require business use cover. If they do require business cover then they should choose an alternative occupation selection!

dunstonh

It seems common sense. Unemployed, housewife/husband and student cannot have business use as they are not employed/self employed.

Its probably there to catch out the significant minority who are self employed or with part time jobs who use the retired/housewife title.

Oscar_The_Grouch

There are an awful lot of people out there who are retired/housewife/etc who also do voluntary work. The general convention is that anything you do for a voluntary organisation is not "work" so is not "commuting" or "business use". Other than that, they should not need anything to do with business use.

cogito

Oscar_The_Grouch wrote: »

There are an awful lot of people out there who are retired/housewife/etc who also do voluntary work. The general convention is that anything you do for a voluntary organisation is not "work" so is not "commuting" or "business use". Other than that, they should not need anything to do with business use.

That's 'social' not business.

mattymoo

Any experts got an idea why estate agents have been singled out? Seems an odd profession to pick on and it's not one that has a poor claims history afaik.

raskazz

mattymoo wrote: »

Any experts got an idea why estate agents have been singled out? Seems an odd profession to pick on and it's not one that has a poor claims history afaik.

They've only removed DOC from estate agents according to the top post, not excluded business use. I imagine that they probably don't want to risk covering a load of young, stressed estate agents using their Foxtons-style cars to race to and from appointments on DOC. Not that they'll have to race around in the current climate.

cmh4135

I spoke to them about this. They were telling me that unless the majority of my time was spent in employment I was a housewife. I work sporadically, perhaps 2 hour every other week. They said that my "employment" as as a housewife which means I cann't get business cover even though the part time job requires travel.

mattymoo

Last line of 1st post - business use does appear to be excluded for estate agents.
In any event, removal of DOC cover from this profession also seems odd to me.