Posted by Brianna Clark | Posted on 30-01-2012
Insurers were given extensive access to civil servants drafting the flagship legal aid bill that would benefit private industry to the tune of hundreds of millions of pounds, new documents reveal. The information helped the industry choreograph an appearance on Radio 4′s Today programme.
Official papers show Robert Wright, the head of civil litigation funding and costs at the Ministry of Justice and the official in charge of the controversial reforms, and his team gave the Association of British Insurers, the industry lobbying body, regular information on their plans.
The documents, obtained under freedom of information, reveal:
• Policy officials were pressing Kenneth Clarke, the justice secretary, to attend insurance industry events with emails telling the ABI that they were “working on” getting ministers to attend events before the Tory party conference last year.
• In May 2011, the government was in talks with the insurance industry over controversial plans to force defendants to pay their costs even if they win a case – a change known as “qualified one-way cost shifting”. The C
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Posted by Brianna Clark | Posted on 08-01-2012
Hundreds of readers contact Your Problems every year because they have lost money – through staff incompetence, misunderstanding and lack of commonsense. Sometimes they suffer deliberate deception and occasionally outright fraud. Well known company names appear frequently although a few lesser known outfits account for a disproportionate volume of my mail bag. These companies employ pushy telephone sales staff who are skilled at persuading people to divulge their bank account details.
It is more than a year since I last wrote about Yes Loans of Cwmbran. Since then, the Office of Fair Trading has said it is minded to revoke the company’s credit licence and is conducting an independent investigation. Y
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Posted by Brianna Clark | Posted on 03-01-2012
The trusty van is the workhorse of many businesses and sole traders the length and breadth of Ireland. Finding the right van insurance is an important decision for any van owner as having good cover in place will help you get back on the road quickly if anything happens.
It’s over five years since I last sold an AXA Van Insurance policy. So I decided to nip downstairs to the AXA Dublin call centre and ask our customer service agents why people are choosing AXA for their van insurance.
Pat Grimes, AXA Customer Service
I met with Pat Grimes, a member of the AXA Customer Service team. P
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Posted by Brianna Clark | Posted on 09-12-2011
CT of Bath nearly lost out having premiums for a missold PPI policy refunded until he invoked name. He had switched his mortgage away from Halifax six years ago and stopped the policy when he realised that, as a self-employed hairdresser, he would never be eligible to make a claim.
Earlier this year I urged him to reclaim his wasted money. When he phoned Halifax he was asked for his PPI policy number. He no longer had this, although he did know the old mortgage number. The clerk was adamant that, without the PPI number, there was nothing the bank could do. CT insisted that I had told him he could make a claim even though he had not paid premiums since 2005.
“Is that newspaper?
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Posted by Brianna Clark | Posted on 21-11-2011
At World First we take the medical benefits of our travel insurance very seriously. Every single one of our customers receives £5 million worth of cover for medical costs. That covers treatment, replacing medication and repatriation to the UK if you need to be treated here.
You might think £5 million sounds like a lot.
It is. But we don’t want to risk our customers getting caught out. The cost of foreign medical care can very rapidly get out of control. Way out of control. And
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Posted by Brianna Clark | Posted on 12-11-2011
Criminals who break data protection laws and obtain personal details by deception should face jail, MPs said today.
The Commons justice select committee backed calls from the information commissioner, Christopher Graham, for tougher sentences, claiming fines of about £150 were an “inadequate” deterrent compared with the financial rewards on offer.
The MPs also welcomed the government’s commitment to ban referral fees in personal injury cases, stating that an outright ban along with jail sentences would “increase the deterrent and reduce the financial incentives for such offences”.
In September the government announced it wanted to help stem rising insurance costs by banning referral fees in personal injury claim cases.
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Posted by Brianna Clark | Posted on 24-10-2011
Have you ever dreamt of being a travel writer? We’re launching a brand new monthly travel writing competition and we’re extremely excited to tell you about it. It’s called My World First and it gives you the chance to show off your flair for the written word and entrance us with your travel tales. You can win some great prizes too. Like a Kindle. More on that in a second.
The theme for the competition is world firsts. We want to know about your first-time travel experiences. It could be anything from the first time you flew on a plane to the first time you drove a hire car abroad. Let y
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Posted by admin | Posted on 21-10-2011
Family health insurance plans is about buying protection against incidences that could arise in the future preventing unnecessary financial losses. To make things easier and get cheaper premiums, you can include members of your extended family: brothers, parents, cousin, etc. So in case you are planning frantically and getting numerous corporations providing family health policies, here is how to go about it.
All insurance companies have different packages and offers and so to get the best plan it falls on you to search properly. To help in your search, use the internet to your benefit as it provides a platform for you to access a good number of quotes from different providers for your convenience. Read more…
