Forged insurance policy docs - Advice please

[cyril1982]

to cut a long story short i have a dispute running with a HP company over a vehicle i financed which was ultimately repossessed, unlawfully, as i had paid over one third and was not even in arrears and no court order was obtained prior.

 

anyway, in defence of my complaint and claim for repayment of All monies paid in accordance with the consumer credit act the HP company have repeatedly claimed that i had a gap insurance policy in place with accounted for the first payment made on my agreement and they are relying on this to bring my total below the one third.

 

however, they failed to produce any documnetation relating to the policy despite numerous formal requests from myself, trading standards and the financial ombudsman service over four years, how they got away with that is a long story i wont go into, however after failing to supply any documentation relating to the insurance policy in response to a subject access request i made, despite sending a covering letter telling me i had a policy but failing to explain why no documentation relating to it had been included in the documents sent in reply to my SAR, i decided to lean on them and after contacting the information commissioner’s office helpline i contacted the hp company to relay that the person i spoke to had indicated that due to their repeated failure to comply with my request for copy documents over such a prolonged period that this would likely mean that the case would be passed to their "investigations team" rather than getting the standard "please comply" letter sent out in most cases.

 

This seemed to rattle the head of compliance at the hp company and he agreed to get me a document sent out, which he did.

 

so we get to the problem, the document he sent me was supposed to be a copy of my original policy document but it just looked fake,i couldn't put my finger on it but it just didnt look right, then i noticed a glaring mistake, the start date of the GAP insurance policy was more than a year before i took out the HP!!

 

surely this is a forged document sent in the hope that i'd accept it and go away quietly, i have sent an SAR to the insurance company named on the document and i'm expecting them to come back saying i had no policy they have untill the end of feb to comply though.

 

what i wanted to know is what penalties/prosecution would likely be brought against the hp company if it is confirmed that they forged this document? And what compensation would i be able to request?

 

i also have solid evidence that they altered my credit agreement to include terms that were in their favour when sending me a "recreated" copy of the agreement, terms that i can now prove were not in the original thanks to finding some of my original paperwork.

 

i'm due to meet with a solicitor once i get a reply to my sar to the insurance company but i'd be really interested to hear the opinions of people here in the meantime, especially from anyone with experience/knowledge in these kind of cases.

[unclebulgaria67]

This is not really an Insurance query.

 

I think that if it can be proved that the HP company have acted in the way you think, that they have committed a criminal act. e.g fraud. Once you have evidence from the Insurance company that the document is fraudulent, ask them to report this to the Police and if they don't you will.

 

The HP company may also face losing their consumer credit license and/or be subject to fines etc. I would presume that if the Insurance company or you involve the Police, that the OFT would then get involved.

 

In regard to what action you could take to obtain compensation, your solicitor will advise on that.

[BigBen70]

Wow not nice situation to be in.

 

The finance company seam to be being unreasonable to the tenth degree. The documentation however in most cases will have been produced by the dealership that you bought the car from as it is them who will have registered the policy.

 

Under good practise guide lines the dealership should be able to provide you with a copy of some sort of document signed by you saying that you either want or don't want gap insurance. Even if you have bought the gap insurance directly from the finance house themselves in most cases you will have had to have signed an additional section again to indicate that you want gap insurance.

 

When it comes to fine the FSA can be very heavy handed ( thank god ) in fact RBS has just been fined millions for non compliance. It sounds as though you have all the correct relevant bodies looking at your case so not give up and leave it in there hands as if there has been and wrong doing they will find it

[cyril1982]

thanks for the replies.

 

bigben70- the gap wasnt arranged by the dealer, it was "sold" to me after i took out the finance by the finance house over the telephone and i never signed any documentation, the call was basically

 

(them) "do you want gap insurance"

(me) "yes i do"

(Them) "ok i will arrange it, do u want me to just read out all of terms and conditions or send them toyou in the post"

(me) "send them in post please"

 

and that was it, so no doubt i agreed to it, but i never received any documents in the post and the finance company repeatedly failed (seemingly unable) to supply any document to prove that i had a policy, something you would think would be pretty easy to do, i.e bring up customer acount, locate policy document, print, put in envelope and send.

 

just makes you wonder what the problem was, did someone forget to put the policy in place? i think so, i guess we will find out soon enough.

 

i may end up handing my evidence over to the oft and the fsa but there are other issues surrounding the hp agreement which need to be resolved first and if this policy doc does prove to be fraudulent then it will just add some weight to my negotiating power, all i wanted originally was for them to remove the default they registered on my CRA file because i was not in default when they repo'd they did it because they were scared i was going to pay upto half and VT the agreement so decided to repo the vehicle despite me being upto date, and i have evidence to prove that now, in the form of notes dating back 3 months before repo while the account was upto date where the head of collections is telling staff not to attempt payment then terminate and repossess if i dont realise but two months i do and i ring up with payment, then in the third month i dont realise, and one payment goes three weeks overdue, no arrears on the account and thats when they repo, default notice arrives after repo dated 3 weeks prior, so almost the day the payment is missed.

 

i did a SAR and thir own records of payment and the notes show i am right, but before i go back at them i just want to have every angle sewn up as tight as possible, they have wriggled free twice and its been four and a half years of fighting so when i go in this time i want to make so i go in for the kill.

 

 

to unclebulgaria67 - thanks for the comments, much appreciated just one disagreement though, i do think this is an insurance problem, or at least what i asked in the Original Post is, sure this is part of a bigger case with broad ranging issues but i was asking about the forgery of insurance docs in particular, by an insureance broker (the hp company were acting as insurance broker in selling me the policy) and if i'm right then it will amount to insurance fraud, as they have stated repeatedly that they took money from me for this policy so if it was never in place they took money from me for a policy which never existed, which is insurance fraud. surely?

[unclebulgaria67]

"to unclebulgaria67 - thanks for the comments, much appreciated just one disagreement though, i do think this is an insurance problem, or at least what i asked in the Original Post is, sure this is part of a bigger case with broad ranging issues but i was asking about the forgery of insurance docs in particular, by an insureance broker (the hp company were acting as insurance broker in selling me the policy) and if i'm right then it will amount to insurance fraud, as they have stated repeatedly that they took money from me for this policy so if it was never in place they took money from me for a policy which never existed, which is insurance fraud. surely?"

 

Yes I hindsight you are correct. It would be relevant to Insurance. What they appear to have done, would be something that the FSA would have to look into, if it were reported to them.

[cyril1982]

ok, got a response to my SAR to the insurance company today, on the face of it, it appears to show that i had a policy but there are some puzzling bits of information in soem of the paperwork.....

firstly in a print off of their computer sytem records headed agreement viewer there is the following information;

 

staus - cancelled

start- 23/03/2007

expiry - 22/03/2011

cancel 17/04/2008

input - 26/03/2007

Acceptance 00/00/0000 What does acceptance mean? and why is there no date here?

resol - 00/00/0000 again, what is resol? and why no date here either?

policy 27/ 03/2007

 

Type - creditor insurance

gross net 163.55

processed 31/03/2007

payment received - (N) which i assume means no? but i paid the money which the policy states would be used for the policy (i.e first finance installment becomes gap insurance) so why is this a no?

 

i'd really appreciate the views of anyone who understands what the above details mean, thanks in advance

[unclebulgaria67]

As far as I can understand it, the policy was only in existence between 23/3/07 and 17/4/08. for which the Insurers received £163.55 The policy was originally supposed to last until 22/3/11, but it was cancelled in April 08 due to non payment. The input date is the date the Insurance was entered onto the Insurers system and the processed date is when the first payment was made.

 

As for acceptance and resol, I have no idea what this is. A guess would be that this was the original quote date and date it was sold, but because these dates would not be known to Insurers (only the broker) they are shown as 00/00/0000 and not dates.

[cyril1982]

ok, an interesting development, i was showing my partner the documents which the insurance company sent to me last night and she said that the screenshot of my account was the exact same computer system her company use and she was able to segragate what looked to me like one big jumble of words into legible sections as they would appear on the screen if you were on the actual system.

 

what transpired is that everytime payment is mentioned there is a ".00" which my partner says means no payment made, in total there are the following referances to payment,

 

1. below my personal details there are payment dates for first payment, late payment etc and all have the date showing as "00/00/0000"
   
2. further down there is a section which states the amount of the policy then it says ".00" after it which i beleive means the amount was not paid,
   
3. then there is the acceptance heading which has a date of 00/00/0000. now neither myself of my partner are in insurance but i believe that this may mean that a policy has to be "accepted" i.e the insurance company agree to insure the person an that this would only happen once the insurance company offered the insurance and payment was made, and that because payment appears not to have been made the policy was never activated or "accepted"
   
4. when the policy was cancelled there is a record of this, but it reads cancelled, then the date of cancellation is displayed, then it reads "payment recieved .00" "refund .00" which i think means nothing was refunded because nothing was paid.
   

this is getting very complex now as it appears that the insurance company are not prepared to go on record against the finance company as they tried to imply that they had provided a policy, yet they provided no policy document bearing their own name, but did send me a policy "shedule" bearing the finance company's logo along with a covering letter supposedly sent out at he time telling me that the policy had been set up, which i didn't recieve at the time, but again, beaing the finance company's logo not their own.

 

does anyone know what details an insurance policy document must contain? as the document i have just looks like a set of terms and conditions..

[unclebulgaria67]

Think you will need to take this up legally i.e think about what court action you could bring.

 

As far as the Insurance documents are concerned, it depends on how your policy was arranged. Were you issued with an individual policy or were you simply part of an Insurance arrangement via the garage/finance company ?

 

Some Insurances are not individually arranged, but they are part of a scheme. This is where the garage/finance company are able to arrange the GAP policy, add it to their scheme and charge you the relevant amount. The garage/finance company may buy GAP coverage at a wholesale rate of say £1000 per £100,000 to be covered. They then charge the customers at say £800 over 5 years to cover say a £30k risk. When they register the cover with the Insurers, it would only state very basic information, as it is not part of an individual application, but something that is part of a scheme offered by the garage/finance co.

 

The risk prices are not based on anything, as I don't deal with GAP cover. I am presuming that the garage/finance co are buying the GAP cover at wholesale rate and are then making a profit by selling it to their customers at whatever rate they want to charge. This is why the Insurers are being sketchy about this, as they have not dealt with an individual application from you, only what information the garage/finance co have supplied.

[cyril1982]

Think you will need to take this up legally i.e think about what court action you could bring.

 

As far as the Insurance documents are concerned, it depends on how your policy was arranged. Were you issued with an individual policy or were you simply part of an Insurance arrangement via the garage/finance company ?

 

Some Insurances are not individually arranged, but they are part of a scheme. This is where the garage/finance company are able to arrange the GAP policy, add it to their scheme and charge you the relevant amount. The garage/finance company may buy GAP coverage at a wholesale rate of say £1000 per £100,000 to be covered. They then charge the customers at say £800 over 5 years to cover say a £30k risk. When they register the cover with the Insurers, it would only state very basic information, as it is not part of an individual application, but something that is part of a scheme offered by the garage/finance co.

 

The risk prices are not based on anything, as I don't deal with GAP cover. I am presuming that the garage/finance co are buying the GAP cover at wholesale rate and are then making a profit by selling it to their customers at whatever rate they want to charge. This is why the Insurers are being sketchy about this, as they have not dealt with an individual application from you, only what information the garage/finance co have supplied.

 

thats interesting as some of the information i have from both parties would seem to suggest that this policy was part of a scheme such as the one you discuss above but if it was then you would think that the finance company would accept responsibility for the policy and provision of copy documents, especially when they were relying so heavily on it to support their arguments, yet they repeatedly failed to provide requested documents relating to the policy when asked by myself and trading standards to provide them.

 

Even when i made a SAR they didn't send them, and when i wrote warning that i would sek a court order to force them to provide details of the policy after their failure to supply any documents relating to the policy in response to my SAR they even ignored that, again failing to send me any documents relating to the GAP policy.

 

it was only when i rang the ICO'S helpline for advice prior to taking legal action, to ensure that they were responsible under the data protection act, to provide the documents and i was told that they were oblidged to send me the documents and as an alternative to taking legal action i could lodge a complaint with them and due to the repeated and serious failures to comply they would hand it over to their "investigations team" rather than sending the standard "please comply" letter, and i subsequebtly relayed that to the finance company that they agreed to send out a document, although the document came with a letter protesting that it had been an inconvenience to them and they were not liable to send the docs and i should have contacted the insurer directly myself and requested the documents from them.

 

this is despite the fact that until this point they hadn't even told me who the insurer was.

 

all pretty strange, and evasive actions if the finance company were managing the policy.

 

something is wrong with this policy, its being covered up, but i'm determined to get to the bottom of what it is.