Wrong insurance sold 15 August 2019 at 10:53AM in Reclaiming mortgage fees, council tax, etc 4 replies 2.7K views

SammijH85

Hello, I was wondering if someone could point us in the right direction please.
My father in law works in a quarry driving a dump truck. Years ago he wanted to take out an insurance policy on himself but the bank told him that because of his job he couldn't have any. However they said a way round it would be to have critical illness cover instead which would cover him if he was ever unable to work due to broken bones, illness accident at work etc. It was about £50 a month he remembers.
Years later, my father in law had a work related accident. He was unable to work for 2 years due to hurting the discs in his back. He was very down as he had worked all his life but the only saving grace was that he had the protection of the insurance to cover his mortgage payments.
He went to the bank and was told that the insurance wouldn't cover him!
He had a small pay out from his firm but not much. This resulted in him having to sell his family home.
We have been to the bank recently, now he feels strong enough to, and they can't see the cover on the system.
Can anyone tell me what our next steps should be please? Would this be classed as a PPI claim or something else?
Thanks so much for any help you can offer.

[Deleted User]

Critical Illness is not PPI.

If he bought the "wrong" cover for an accident that happened later, how is that the fault of the Bank?

He could certainly "complain" that he was told the CC insurance would cover "broken bones", but a copy of the policy and it's coverage would soon disprove that.

Probably wise to forget about this. Any "complaint" would be vexatious. Regardless, there doesn't appear to be any record of this insurance.

SonOf

However they said a way round it would be to have critical illness cover instead which would cover him if he was ever unable to work due to broken bones, illness accident at work etc

Critical illness cover does none of those things. What he describes is a different type of policy.

I wonder if he is mixing up conversations and his recollection is not clear.

Can anyone tell me what our next steps should be please? Would this be classed as a PPI claim or something else?

CIC is not PPI.
Ironically, what he needed was PPI. A PPI policy would fit the scenario he was looking for. However, PPI has not been retailed by banks for many years. It is only available today via comparison sites, IFAs and whole of market protection advisers.

There doesn't appear to be anything wrong here.
Banks can only retail from their product range. They didnt have a product. However, they retailed a product that he did have a financial need for. Had he suffered a claimable event in the areas CIC covers then they would have paid out. However, he suffered an event that a CIC does not cover and he never bought any insurance to cover that area.

He is free to make a complaint to the bank but you would expect the complaint to fail. The bank will have a factfind, needs analysis and a suitability report that shows he had a financial need for the policy. A complaint like this nearly always falls back on whether there is a financial need for it or not. However, banks are often very strange with complaint handling by upholding complaints that should be rejected and rejecting ones they should uphold.

haras_nosirrah

It is also possible that ppi was unobtainable if his job type was not a classification they covered through being too dangerous

Bermonia

You say this all happened years ago, if the sale was more than six years ago and his rejected claim was more than three years ago then his complaint is time barred and he the firm would likely not even consider the issue (regardless of any perceived mis-selling)