Waheed was relying on public liability insurance but found it hadn’t been included in his business protection policy. What did his insurance broker have to say?
What happened?
Waheed ran a small building company as a sole trader. He took out business protection insurance through a broker.
One of Waheed’s customers contacted him to say the wooden flooring he’d cleaned at her property was damaged. She wanted him to come back and put things right without charging or refund her what she paid him.
As this would leave Waheed out of pocket, he made a claim under his business protection insurance.
The insurer declined the claim, saying Waheed didn’t have cover for defective workmanship. But Waheed said he had specifically requested this cover so he complained to the broker who’d sold him the policy.
The broker said he didn’t recall Waheed asking for this sort of cover, so Waheed brought his complaint to us.
What did we do?
While we were investigating the complaint, we discovered that Waheed took the policy out over the phone, so we requested a copy of the call recording.
We listened to it and heard Waheed asking the broker for public liability insurance for his business.
From the policy documentation, we could see the broker hadn’t included public liability insurance in the policy that Waheed had taken out. Because public liability insurance wasn’t included in his policy, his claim was rejected.
For that reason, we upheld Waheed’s complaint. And we asked the broker to pay for the claim that wasn’t covered under the business protection insurance they’d sold to Waheed.