Urgent need to check new policy documents, adviser warns

Alan Lakey, partner principal at Highclere Financial Services, has so far identified five out-dated policies that document Aviva's June 2009 critical illness cover plan, with 15 definitions missing when compared to the July 2012 terms they were originally written against.

Lakey said the firm had written 16 policies in the last six to eight weeks against Aviva's July 2012 terms and was recalling all policy documents already sent out to clients.

Of six documents checked, one has been identified as having the correct July 2012 terms and conditions.

A written response to his complaint from an Aviva customer service adviser, said: "Please accept our apologies with regards to the errors on the policy documents. I have identified and corrected the errors and the system is showing correctly.

"I can confirm that the correct policy documents have been sent to you, for your client. Due to the changes that have been made to our Critical Illness definitions we have also issued a policy endorsement directly to all customers to include our improved definitions."

The customer service adviser added that policy documents for applications submitted after 25 November 2012 had been updated, and a copy of endorsements sent to Lakey's clients had been enclosed.

Lakey said: "I am not sure I have had this sorted to be honest. I want to know how Aviva is identifying what policy documents may have been sent out with the wrong date.

"Clients will not understand what an extra documents with terms on, referring to a policy with incorrect terms on, means. I want new copies with the right date on them to be sent out like I should have got in the first place."

He added that the letter implied a system error and questioned whether this was an isolated incident or whether it could have happened to others.

"Logic tells me there must be more because these have come through at different times and there are different start dates," Lakey said.

"There is a far greater chance that this has happened to other people and advisers have just operated in the same way I have, by assuming all was ok and sending them straight out to clients."

Adviser connections portal LifeQuote, a trading style of Direct Life & Pension Services, reported that it had not experienced any such cases as far as it could tell.

Neil McCarthy, sales and marketing director at LifeQuote, said: "Aviva is a pretty solid office. Its processes are usually really efficient in getting business through."

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• Topics
• Critical Illness
• Aviva
• Alan Lakey
• highclere
• complaints handling
• Client complaints
• Direct Life