Insurance
If you have a complaint about an insurance company or claim, we can help. Find out more about the types of insurance complaints we deal with, and what we can do to help put things right.
How we handle complaints about insurance
There are certain types of insurance many people need to have – like car insurance and buildings insurance. But other insurance policies are matters of choice – like private medical or dental insurance. We receive complaints from consumers about a range of insurance products.
We look at the facts and circumstances of each individual complaint. We listen impartially to both you and the business when deciding what’s fair and reasonable in the circumstances. We also take into account:
- the policy wording
- any relevant laws and regulations
- industry codes of conduct and best practice
- any relevant evidence like medical reports, photos, application and claims forms
Once we’ve considered everything, we’ll set out our findings, explaining whether we think the business has treated you fairly or not. If we think the business has treated you unfairly, we’ll set out what we think needs to be done to put things right.
Complaints we see
Find out more about the types of complaint we get about insurance, and how we might be able to help.
Bringing your complaint to us
Our service is free and easy to use.
When you bring a complaint to us, it's our job to weigh up all the facts. We’ll make a decision about what happened using evidence from you, the financial business and any relevant third parties. We'll also consider:
- the relevant law
- any regulations that applied at the time
- any industry codes of conduct that were in force at the time
When we've finished investigating, we’ll tell you whether we think the business treated you fairly or not. And we’ll explain how we reached our decision.
If we think the business treated you unfairly, we'll tell them to put you back where you'd be if they hadn't made a mistake. We might also ask them to make an award for any distress and inconvenience caused.
How long it takes
In general, for most types of insurance complaint, it takes one to two months for us to allocate cases. It can sometimes take longer, depending on what your complaint is about.
We’re working hard to reduce the time it takes to allocate cases for investigation, so you may hear from us sooner than this. If you’re facing financial hardship or severe ill health, please let us know.
Find out more about when you can expect to hear from us once we’ve started to investigate your complaint.
Information for financial businesses
If you’re a business looking for information to help you resolve complaints, you can find more detail about insurance complaints in the business section of our website.
