G Foster Taylor alleges that some insurers are not providing brokers with adequate notice of changes to policy wordings (Letters, 7 April). He suggests that the FSA should set requirements on this issue. In fact, we already require insurers to ensure that they provide brokers with product information in good time to ensure that brokers can comply with our rules.
Our rules require brokers to give customers a policy summary before the contract concludes and for some sales channels the policy wording must also be supplied to the customer before the contract concludes.
If brokers find that particular insurers are not complying with this requirement, this should be brought to our attention.
He also suggests that we should provide guidance on whether certain policy exclusions are acceptable.
The FSA does not dictate the scope of cover offered by insurers as this is a commercial matter, although we can take action if a term of a contract is considered unfair under the Unfair Terms in Consumer Contracts Regulations.
Finally, Foster Taylor suggests that insurers should introduce version control for policy wordings by including a reference number on the schedule. To meet the record-keeping requirements insurers will need to keep a record of which policy wording they have issued to each customer.
We do not dictate how they should do this, but one way of doing this would be the approach he suggested.
Dr Eleanor Linton
Head of mortgage and general
insurance policy FSA
