UNIQA POS reviews

This section of our website describes how we approach complaints involving legal expenses insurance. This is a complex area combining legal and insurance issues - so it is often necessary for the language used in this section to reflect these complexities.

overview

Legal expenses insurance is purchased to fund the costs of legal advice and/or the costs of bringing or defending a court case. Legal expenses insurance can be bought:

• "before the event" - in case a future legal action has to be fought or defended; or
• "after the event" - where the policyholder has already decided to take or defend a legal action and wants to insure against the risk of losing and having to pay the other side's costs.

Legal expenses insurance is not designed to pay the policyholder the actual damages that they are trying to recover through the court action. Nor does it cover someone's liability to pay damages to others. There is separate insurance for that.

typical complaints

The legal expenses complaints that we see usually - though not always - involve disputes about one or more of three issues:

• whether the proposed action has reasonable prospects of success;
• the choice of solicitors; and
• allegations of maladministration in relation to the policy and/or the claim.

non-motor legal expenses insurance

Although it is possible to buy "stand alone" legal expenses insurance, most policies are added to household buildings and contents policies as an optional (sometimes free) extra.

Importantly, a different insurer to the household insurer will usually underwrite the legal expenses section of the policy. This is to try to avoid a conflict of interest and to spread the risk.

For example, if a policyholder were to take their neighbour to court in a property dispute, it is possible they could share the same household insurer. By having specialist insurers underwrite the legal expenses risk, the chance of a conflict of interest is reduced - though not completely removed.

If the main insurer also underwrites the legal expenses cover, it will usually delegate the actual administration of this cover to a claims-handling agent, so as to be able to continue to spread the risk.