Insurance And The FSA

Arlo Guthrie — Thu, 08 Jan 2009 09:57:20 GMT

Current Revision posted to The Practice Survival Guide by Arlo Guthrie on 1/8/2009 9:57:20 AM

As of January 2005, the Financial Services Authority (FSA) became responsible for regulating intermediaries selling general insurance policies. This directly impacts on the advice you can give pet owners about insurance.

The FSA has produced a factsheet for those involved in the selling of insurance. It states:

If you do no more than introduce your customers to insurers or brokers, you may be excluded from regulation. For example, a vet would be able to rely on this exclusion to provide information about a specific kind of pet insurance to his customers or give his customers the contact details of providers of pet insurance without needing to become authorised. You can rely on this exclusion even if you receive a commission from insurers for introducing your customers to them.

Note in particular that the exclusion does not extend to:

advice in the form of a recommendation to buy a specific policy;
filling out an application form on behalf of a customer; or
information provided to the insurer.

In other words, what you can continue to do is recommend pet insurance itself, and inform clients about policies with facts. For example: "Mr Smith, the costs of veterinary care are unpredictable. We strongly recommend that you take out insurance to cover for the unexpected. Here is an information leaflet about a policy from Petguard Insurance."

What you will no longer be able to do, unless authorised, is offer advice or opinion about specific pet insurance policies. For example: "Mr Smith, the costs of veterinary care are unpredictable. We strongly recommend that you take out insurance to cover for the unexpected. We think the best policy is the one offered by PetGuard."

It is your responsibility to ensure that you operate within the law in this area; further reading is available from the FSA website: http://www.fsa.gov.uk