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Terms of Business
About us
The Alpha Healthcare Consultancy of The Kudos Buildings, Unit 3, Harrison Close, Knowlhill, Milton Keynes, MK5 8PA is authorised and regulated by the Financial Services Authority (FSA). We are permitted to arrange, advise on, deal as an agent of insurers and assist in claims handling with respect to non-investment insurance policies. You can check these details on the FSA’s Register by visiting the FSA’s website
www.fsa.gov.uk/register or by contacting the FSA on 0845 606 1234.
We provide customers with independent advice and are therefore able to compare and contrast the products of different companies. Further, we will use our expertise to ensure that any policies recommended are suitable to the particular needs of our customers and only provide advice on matters in which we are knowledgeable.
Your duty of disclosure
Your insurance is based upon the information provided to the insurance company and you must ensure that all such information is complete and accurate, and that any facts that may influence the insurer’s decision to accept and pay a valid claim are disclosed.
Failure to disclose material information may invalidate your insurance and could mean that part, or all, of a claim may not be paid.
How to cancel
You may have a statutory right to cancel this insurance within a short period. Please refer to your policy summary or your policy document for further details. If you cancel you will receive a pro rata refund of premium from the insurer. If you wish to cancel outside this period you may not receive a pro rata refund of premium.
Fees and charges
We normally derive our income from commission paid to us by medical insurance companies. Where a fee or charge is payable, you will be advised before you commit to it. Alpha Healthcare does not handle client money. We never accept a cheque made out to us (unless it is a cheque in settlement of charges or disbursements for which we have sent you an invoice) or handle cash.
How to claim
Please refer to your policy summary or your policy document if you need to notify a claim. You should contact the insurer direct as soon as possible using the contact details provided.
Protecting your information
All personal information about you will be treated as private and confidential (even when you are no longer a customer), except where the disclosure is made at your request or with your consent in relation to administering your insurance, and except where the law requires us. The FSA may ask us to provide it with access to our customer records in order that it may carry out a review of our activities.
Some or all of the information you supply to us in connection with your insurance proposal may be passed to other insurance companies for underwriting and claims purposes. Under the Data Protection Act 1998, you have a right of access to see personal information about you that is held in our records, whether electronically or manually. If you have any queries, please write to the Managing Director at the above address.
Complaints
It is our intention to provide a high level of service at all times. However if you have reason to make a complaint about our service you should contact the Managing Director at the above address. Your complaint will be acknowledged within 5 business days. You may be entitled to refer it subsequently to the Financial Ombudsman Service. Further information is available at
http://www.financial-ombudsman.org.uk/ or within our internal complaints procedure, which is available to you on request at any time.
By accepting these Terms of Insurance Business you are giving your consent for us to operate in this way.
Compensation arrangements
We are covered by the Financial Services Compensation Scheme. You may be entitled to compensation from the scheme if we cannot meet our obligations. This depends on the type of business and the circumstances of the claim. Insurance advising and arranging is covered for 100% of the first £2,000 and 90% of the remainder of the claim, without any upper limit. For compulsory classes of insurance, insurance advising and arranging is covered for 100% of the claim, without any upper limit. Further information about compensation scheme arrangements is available from the FSCS at
www.fscs.org.uk/
Complaints Handling- Service Standards
Complaints are defined by nature as ‘any expression of dissatisfaction’. This can include complaints against The Alpha Healthcare Consultancy, insurance providers or other third parties. In our role as intermediaries, complaints against insurers and other third parties may be directed to us so that we can facilitate a resolution.
These service standards do not apply where a complaint has been resolved by close of business on the business day following its receipt.
Acknowledgement of Complaint
We will send you written acknowledgement of your complaint within five business days of its receipt, giving the name or job title of the individual handling the complaint for us (along with the details of our internal complaint handling procedures).
If we are able to provide a response within five business days of receipt of a complaint we may combine our acknowledgement of the complaint with the final response.
The response will inform you that, if you remain dissatisfied with our response, you may refer your complaint to the Financial Ombudsman Service and must do so within six months to be eligible.
Complaint Still Open at Four Weeks:
We will, within four weeks of receiving your complaint, send you either:
- A final response or
- A holding response, which explains why we are not yet in a position to resolve your complaint and indicates when we will make further contact (which must be within eight weeks of receipt of your complaint)
We will, by the end of eight weeks after its receipt of your complaint, send you either:
A final response or
- A response which:
- Explains that we are still not in a position to make a final response, giving reasons for the further delay and indicating when we expect to be able to provide a final response
- informs you that you may refer your complaint to the Financial Ombudsman Service if you are dissatisfied with the delay and enclose a copy of the Financial Ombudsman Service's explanatory leaflet.
You may accept our response in writing at any time during this process, even when we have not issued a final response. Our response need not refer to the Financial Ombudsman Service, but we will explain how your complaint will be progressed if you remain dissatisfied.
Complaint Still Open at 8 Weeks:
Within eight weeks of receiving a complaint, we will send you a written response which:
- offers redress (whether or not we accept your complaint) or rejects your complaint and gives reasons for doing so
- informs you how to pursue your complaint with us if you remain dissatisfied
- refers to the ultimate availability of the Financial Ombudsman Service
- indicates that we will regard the complaint as closed if we do not receive a reply within eight weeks
We are not obliged to continue to comply with the two-stage process unless you indicate that you remain dissatisfied, in which case, our obligation to comply resumes.
This procedure caters for the situation where our complaints procedures provide for you to refer your complaint back to us again or to our head office before a final response is issued. However, we recognise that some complainants may never respond to us or may take a long time to do so.
We aim to provide you with easy access to the second stage of the process (for example, by referring complaints on to the next stage on your behalf if you remain dissatisfied).
Provided that we have sent a letter which complies with the conditions above within eight weeks of receiving your complaint:
- if you do not reply at all we are not required to send a final response
- if you do not reply within eight weeks of our letter we will treat your complaint as closed for the purposes of our reporting requirements
- if you reply (within or after eight weeks) we are required to continue to comply with the eight week/FOS process, and the time limits therefore resume – but if you take more than a week to reply to a written response of the kind described immediately above, the additional time in excess of a week will not count for the purposes of the four/eight week time limits
When we send you our final response, the final response will:
- inform you that you may refer your complaint to the Financial Ombudsman Service if you are dissatisfied with the final response and that you must do so within six months
- enclose a copy of the Financial Ombudsman Service's explanatory leaflet (unless we have already done so)
You can refer your complaint to the Financial Ombudsman Service if you receive a final response with which you are dissatisfied, or if we have had at least eight weeks to resolve your complaint and have failed to do so in that time. You may decide whether to give us more time before exercising any right you may have to refer your complaint to the Financial Ombudsman Service. The six-month time limit within which you must refer a complaint to the Financial Ombudsman Service begins at the date of our final response.
A closed complaint is:
- where we have sent a final response
- where you have indicated in writing your acceptance of our earlier response
- where you have not responded to us within eight weeks of the written response referred to above
Where your complaint is reported as closed because you have not replied to us within eight weeks of a written response, we will treat the date of that response as the date when the complaint was closed for the purposes of our reporting requirements.
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