Personal accident,sickness and unemployment insurance

sarn53

In the early 1990's my husband and I re-mortgaged our house with what was then the Abbey National, whilst in their office discussing it we were offered a personal accident,sickness and unemployment policy with General Accident, we thought this would be a good idea as my husband had suffered what the hospital described as a "warning" heart attack, it was so slight it did not even show up on the ECG, so after discussing it with the person dealing with our re-mortgage we decided to take the policy out, the policy was to pay either one of us £200 per month to help cover bills etc should we be off work, the policy was index linked so the payment went up and down, everything was fine until 1997 when my husband was take ill at work and a couple of weeks later after tests he was told he had angina and needed a triple bypass, when we tried to claim on the policy we were told that as he had suffered heart problems before and it was within the 2 year period exclusion zone we could not claim, we tried to argue with them that what he had before was just a warning and the doctors would not even call it a heart attack and what he had at that time was angina, so to us it was two different things, but they said it came under one big umbrella called "heart disease" , the person who sold us the policy new of his condition and that was the reason we were taking it out yet she failed to mention the 2 year exclusion, and if we had held off on taking the policy out for 2 months we would have been past that 2 year exclusion, does this policy come within the range of ppi and is it classed as being mis-sold, I would be grateful for any information as even after all this time it still rankles me that we paid out all that money on a policy that would not pay out for the very thing it was taken out for.

dunstonh

and if we had held off on taking the policy out for 2 months we would have been past that 2 year exclusion,

It is two years from starting the policy. So, if you had waited 2 months, it would be 2 years from that point.

does this policy come within the range of ppi and is it classed as being mis-sold,

Exclusion periods are not an issue. Lots of policies linked to health have them. You should have been made aware of this but nearly 30 years after the event, its unlikely there is any audit trail in existence to show it either way.

I would be grateful for any information as even after all this time it still rankles me that we paid out all that money on a policy that would not pay out for the very thing it was taken out for.

Did you not complain at the time?

A complaint now could potentially be timebarred under the 3/6 year rule. (more than 6 years from the sale and more than 3 years from being reasonably aware of an issue to complain about).

You can try but it would be difficult to say what chances you would have after such as a long time.