Whole-of-life insurance cover
On this page you'll discover whether you can bring a complaint about your whole-of-life insurance to us and what will happen if you do.
On this page
Handling investments complaints?
What is whole-of-life insurance cover?
Whole-of-life insurance is a type of life assurance.
If you take out whole-of-life insurance cover, you’ll usually pay a monthly or annual premium. With some policies, you might pay a lump sum at the start.
The money you pay into the policy is invested for the lifetime of the policy to increase its value. The policy then pays a sum of money to your family or your estate when you die.
Can you complain about your whole-of-life insurance cover?
You can bring your complaint to us if you feel you were mis-sold whole-of-life insurance cover, for example, because:
- it isn't a suitable investment for your needs – you may not have wanted to lock away money for the rest of your life
- another form of life insurance, such as ‘term assurance’ would have suited you better
- the policy is investing in funds that are too risky for you
- you didn’t know the policy would be reviewed – or that reviews might mean your premium payments could go up or the value of the fund go down
Or you may be unhappy about how your insurer has managed your policy, for example because:
- of delays or mistakes with the administration, or
- your policy wasn’t reviewed when it should have been
If so, you can bring your complaint to us.
How to complain about your whole-of-life insurance cover
Our service is free and easy to use.
- Before bringing your complaint to us, you should make a formal complaint to the company involved.
- If they don't send you a final response letter within eight weeks – or you're unhappy with their response – you can complain to us.
- Our complaint checker will tell you more about some of the things we need to know upfront to help you get ready to send us your complaint.
- Fill in our online complaint form. Your case will be assigned to a case handler who will get in touch when they start to investigate.
- To help us consider a complaint fairly, we may ask you to provide more information to help us understand what happened.
How we resolve complaints about whole-of-life insurance cover
We’ll make our decision about what happened using evidence from you, the financial business and any relevant third parties. To reach a decision, we'll also consider:
- the relevant law
- any regulations that applied at the time
- any industry codes of conduct in force at the time
- your personal and financial circumstances when you bought the policy
- the advice you were given, including anything that you or your insurer remember from meetings when the policy was sold
- the product literature you were given
- any letters you received explaining the reasons for the business's recommendation
- the features of the fund you’re paying into, if you’re complaining about investment risk
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It may be that you didn't need whole-of-life insurance cover or another type of cover would have suited you better, for example because:
- you only needed cover for a limited time and should have been offered term assurance
- you were looking for a way to save
- because you didn't have any dependants or had life cover from another source, such as an occupational pension, or
- there's another reason why you feel the policy wasn't right for you
Every case is different, but we always look at the facts of each complaint to make a decision.
If we believe you were mis-sold or wrongly advised to buy the whole-of-life insurance cover, we'll most likely tell your adviser or policy provider to:
- replace the mis-sold policy with a more suitable one, and refund any excess premiums with interest, or
- refund all payments you made to the policy if you didn't need life assurance at all, or
- pay you compensation that takes account of the average market premium for term assurance at the time the mis-sold policy was taken out
The exact details of how we’ll ask the financial adviser or policy provider to put things right will depend on your complaint and how you lost out.
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A whole-of-life plan is usually reviewed at set times, which you'll find in the terms and conditions or key features document.
You may be unhappy because your policy provider didn’t carry out a review when they said they would. If so, we'll ask them what they would have advised if the review had taken place at the right time.
Sometimes, when a policy provider carries out a review, they ask for more money to maintain the sum assured. Or they’ll tell you that if you pay the same premium, the policy won’t pay out so much when you die.
In these cases, we’ll look at whether you were given clear and fair information about reviews when you took out the policy. We'll want to be sure the information wasn't misleading and that it was in line with regulations.
Sometimes customers tell us they weren't expecting any reviews and would have chosen a different policy if they'd known. If we agree that you might have taken out a non-reviewable policy, we might tell your policy provider to:
- construct or reconstruct a non-reviewable policy
- construct one with the business paying any extra cost
- rewrite the policy on a ‘minimum’ or ‘standard’ sum assured basis to increase the likelihood of the sum assured being maintained in the long term
We'll tell you whether we believe you've been treated unfairly or not and explain how we reached our decision.
If we think you've lost money – or may lose income – because you received the wrong advice or a mistake, we'll tell the financial adviser or policy provider to put things right.
We may also tell them to pay you compensation for any distress or inconvenience you have suffered.
Case studies
Couple complain when whole-of-life policy sold to them doesn't fit their needs
Whole of life assurance
A customer complains when his insurer reviews his policy and asks him to double his premiums
Whole of life assurance Investments
