**Setanta Insurance**

peteb2

Loads of people! Not being unhelpful but just do a search of the threads. The matter of renewal has already been fought out on boards.ie.

Fred Swanson

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gordongekko

Fred Swanson wrote: »

There is redress available if you go the right way about it.

Please tell us how.

broganire

I tried going down the route of chargeback from my credit card company. But since I paid my broker and my broker has a clause/disclaimer in their policies stating that they are not liable if the insurance company goes bust, the credit card company cannot get anything off setanta.

FullblownRose

My broker seem to have appointed a particular hard faced employee to fend off former setanta cutomers. ''Ah yeah I know but that's just the way it is'' was this person' reply when I poiltely pointed out that the alternative policy is very expensive.

djimi

broganire wrote: »

I tried going down the route of chargeback from my credit card company. But since I paid my broker and my broker has a clause/disclaimer in their policies stating that they are not liable if the insurance company goes bust, the credit card company cannot get anything off setanta.

If the broker issued the policy after Setanta announced that they were not going to selling new policies then surely you have good reason to pursue the broker? It was made clear at the start of the year that Setanta were in trouble and would not be selling new policies.

Fred Swanson

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peteb2

djimi wrote: »

If the broker issued the policy after Setanta announced that they were not going to selling new policies then surely you have good reason to pursue the broker? It was made clear at the start of the year that Setanta were in trouble and would not be selling new policies.

Are we really going to have to go down this route again?!!:mad:

mercfisher

Fred Swanson wrote: »

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Yes and thankfully i stood my ground and got my refund, no broker could sell a policy after 24th Jan 2014, why they did i dont know, how they did I dont know, maybe the biys in Harcourt tce will look into it ! Maybe not !

peteb2

Yawn. Haven't we done this enough? How could they do it? 4 word - Orderly withdrawal from market.

Fred Swanson

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peteb2

Its obviously a business decision that some are making. As I said before any premiums collected for Setanta prior to their collapse are due to the liquidator as per the Central Bank. So the broker will have to pay the money over or face the possibility of being penalised.

mercfisher

Hi All including the famous broker peteb2 here is the official correspondence sent from Setanta Malta to all Irish Brokers including you Pete ?


Important Announcement from Setanta Insurance
Posted: 27/01/14
Setanta Insurance Company Limited Announcement (two paragraphs below)

It is with sincere regret that we have to inform you that Setanta Insurance Company Limited has ceased writing new business and issuing further renewals with effect from close of business Friday 24 January 2014. The company has appointed Heritage Insurance Management (Malta) Limited to undertake the run-off process and has advised the Malta Financial Services Authority accordingly.
The offices of Setanta Insurance Services Limited in Dublin will remain open to handle all existing and any future claims arising from time on risk and also assist with any queries you may have in relation to this development. Setanta Insurance Services Limited contact details remain the same and you can communicate with them in the usual way.
As indicated above, Setanta Insurance Services Limited will not be inviting renewal however it will maintain cover on all existing policies to expiry of their current term. Renewal pack documentaion will be issued in the normal way to ensure that you receive the necessary policyholder documents to allow you to re-broke these policies and place them with an alternative insurance provider.

No New Renewals,or no new business on 24th Jan. This is why you should proceed with a claim on the small claims court for a full refund like I did and which I got a full refund.

Please go this route and get reimbursed, if you need any help Private message me and I'll help you out as best I can, if your renewal was before the 24th Jan I'm sorry you will have to deal with the liquidator.

leitrim1

I heard from a reliable source that some brokers loaned some of their own money to Setanta to get them out of a hole and that is also now lost.

Liam McPoyle

Fred Swanson wrote: »

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I would imagine this is from cases where the broker had yet to pay Setanta anything over. Most brokers will have up to a 90 day credit facility with the insurance companies they deal with so it is likely that some of them had funds sitting in their own account that had been paid for Setanta policies but hadn't been paid to Setanta.

It could also be that the brokers refunded the broker fee as a gesture of good will.

Or that people had incorrectly been sold Setanta policies after the cut off point in January.

peteb2

mercfisher wrote: »

Hi All including the famous broker peteb2 here is the official correspondence sent from Setanta Malta to all Irish Brokers including you Pete ?


Important Announcement from Setanta Insurance
Posted: 27/01/14
Setanta Insurance Company Limited Announcement (two paragraphs below)

It is with sincere regret that we have to inform you that Setanta Insurance Company Limited has ceased writing new business and issuing further renewals with effect from close of business Friday 24 January 2014. The company has appointed Heritage Insurance Management (Malta) Limited to undertake the run-off process and has advised the Malta Financial Services Authority accordingly.
The offices of Setanta Insurance Services Limited in Dublin will remain open to handle all existing and any future claims arising from time on risk and also assist with any queries you may have in relation to this development. Setanta Insurance Services Limited contact details remain the same and you can communicate with them in the usual way.
As indicated above, Setanta Insurance Services Limited will not be inviting renewal however it will maintain cover on all existing policies to expiry of their current term. Renewal pack documentaion will be issued in the normal way to ensure that you receive the necessary policyholder documents to allow you to re-broke these policies and place them with an alternative insurance provider.

Please go this route and get reimbursed, if you need any help Private message me and I'll help you out as best I can, if your renewal was before the 24th Jan I'm sorry you will have to deal with the liquidator.

Seeing as you were kind enough to name check me, I'll be civil enough to respond.

Do you understand how renewal of an insurance policy works from a broker side? You have to issue renewal terms to a policy holder at least 3 weeks ahead of their renewal date. So insurance companies generally have them provided to brokers by about 6 weeks in advance of renewal date.

So by the time of the email you refer to a lot of brokers would have issued renewal to clients due in March. So Setanta were standing over all renewals up to around 14th March.

And then you saw in that email the famous words that keep arising through this thread - RUN-OFF.

mercfisher

I wish brokers would stop trying to defend the miss-selling of Setanta policies after the 24th Jan, making reference to "renewal notice" 6 weeks in advance etc is just muddying the water. a renewal notice has no legal status whatsoever and is actually nothing other than a reminder notice that the insurance is due for renewal, no insurance is in place until signed and paid for, they mean nothing other than a reminder, so as to explain it again if you get a reminder/renewal from a broker which is usually sent with a copy of your no claims discount, if you wish you can not take up the policy if not you can get a quote or insurance from another provider, you are free to do what you want this is why the no claims discount cert is provided to allow the client to look elsewhere!
The Run off that Pete speaks of was to start on 24th Jan and was for policies sold up to and including 24th Jan and not after this date but it seems like it was ignored by brokers who now have to re-pay their clients, or face embarrassment in their local court for ignoring the Setanta notice which I have posted previously.
Setanta were NOT standing over renewals up to March they were in fact as per their statement As indicated above, and repeated below verbatim
"Setanta Insurance Services Limited will not be inviting renewal"

That looks fairly clear to me?

My broker reimbursed me after legal threat, believe me it wasn't a "commercial decision".

peteb2

mercfisher wrote: »

The Run off that Pete speaks of was to start on 24th Jan and was for policies sold up to and including 24th Jan and not after this date but it seems like it was ignored by brokers who now have to re-pay their clients, or face embarrassment in their local court for ignoring the Setanta notice which I have posted previously.
Setanta were NOT standing over renewals up to March they were in fact as per their statement As indicated above, and repeated below verbatim
"Setanta Insurance Services Limited will not be inviting renewal"

That looks fairly clear to me?

My broker reimbursed me after legal threat, believe me it wasn't a "commercial decision".

Now you are back into the land of fiction. And its down to YOUR interpretation of the email.

Believe me, there's no mass reimbursement of Setanta premiums. And it is most definitely a commercial decision. You've just stated you threatened him legally, so he decided to give you 500 quid or so because it was less than having to bother to get a solicitor involved on his side. So how isn't that a commercial decision?

peteb2

mercfisher wrote: »

Setanta were NOT standing over renewals up to March they were in fact as per their statement As indicated above, and repeated below verbatim
"Setanta Insurance Services Limited will not be inviting renewal"

That looks fairly clear to me?

They had already invited renewal at that stage for 5 weeks after that date.

mercfisher

Most decent brokers who sold policies after 24th Jan are refunding customers, maybe a few hard nosed ones might have to be reminded by a judge, but the majority are obviously law abiding honest people and are refunding premiums as they know they should legally and more importantly morally.

mercfisher

peteb2 wrote: »

They had already invited renewal at that stage for 5 weeks after that date.

Yes Pete and the notice on the 24th cancelled the invitation or did with most right thinking brokers who read the notice correctly

peteb2

mercfisher wrote: »

Most decent brokers who sold policies after 24th Jan are refunding customers, maybe a few hard nosed ones might have to be reminded by a judge, but the majority are obviously law abiding honest people and are refunding premiums as they know they should legally and more importantly morally.

There is a distinction between your language and how its interpreted. Sold a policy = someone calls you up looking for a quote for a new policy and you SELL them Setanta.

Offer renewal does not equal selling a policy.

I haven't seen a judge remind anyone of anything. Have you?

As I said, Central Bank have already said that any money for anything up until Setanta went into liquidation - even two days before - belongs to the liquidator. So anyone that refunds premiums, well that is between them and the central bank and they are running the chance of paying out on the double".

peteb2

mercfisher wrote: »

Yes Pete and the notice on the 24th cancelled the invitation or did with most right thinking brokers who read the notice correctly

No it didn't. And you can expect that if you rang someone and said "oh that renewal notice I sent you for your policy due in February well I don't think you should go with it. You should go with this AXA policy for €200 more", you would have got a short shrift and been told they want to renew their existing policy. Which again was valid to offer renewal on.

djimi

peteb2 wrote: »

And you can expect that if you rang someone and said "oh that renewal notice I sent you for your policy due in February well I don't think you should go with it. You should go with this AXA policy for €200 more", you would have got a short shrift and been told they want to renew their existing policy.

Yes but if you elaborated and said that you could pay €200 less for a policy that might actually offer you no cover, which is what a decent broker should have been doing, then the person in question would want to be incredibly stupid to pay that much money for nothing more than a piece of paper. Id love to know just how many brokers were actually up front about the predicament that Setanta were in at the time.

peteb2

djimi wrote: »

Yes but if you elaborated and said that you could pay €200 less for a policy that might actually offer you no cover, which is what a decent broker should have been doing, then the person in question would want to be incredibly stupid to pay that much money for nothing more than a piece of paper. Id love to know just how many brokers were actually up front about the predicament that Setanta were in at the time.

Once again, what predicament? That they were withdrawing from the market from an unprofitable line of business that numerous underwriters do all the time? The only reason it became an issues was it that they subsequently went bust..........in April.

Anyways lads I'm tired of repeating myself. I thought we were having an adult conversation here and sticking to actual facts as opposed to interpretation. It's not the consumer show we're on here.

djimi

peteb2 wrote: »

Once again, what predicament? That they were withdrawing from the market from an unprofitable line of business that numerous underwriters do all the time? The only reason it became an issues was it that they subsequently went bust..........in April.

Anyways lads I'm tired of repeating myself. I thought we were having an adult conversation here and sticking to actual facts as opposed to interpretation. It's not the consumer show we're on here.

It seemed to be pretty much common knowledge around the turn of the year that they were in trouble; if I knew about it at the time having absolutely no connection to the industry whatsoever, I find it really hard to believe that brokers didnt have the slightest clue that Setanta were in real trouble...

peteb2

djimi wrote: »

It seemed to be pretty much common knowledge around the turn of the year that they were in trouble; if I knew about it at the time having absolutely no connection to the industry whatsoever, I find it really hard to believe that brokers didnt have the slightest clue that Setanta were in real trouble...

So why didn't you come on here and post and tell everyone at the time?? You know why - because anything you heard was a rumour unless it becomes fact. And you would have been sued for it.

djimi

peteb2 wrote: »

So why didn't you come on here and post and tell everyone at the time?? You know why - because anything you heard was a rumour unless it becomes fact. And you would have been sued for it.

Im pretty sure it was on here that I read it!

Rumour or not, if I heard it in the outside world then I can only imagine that anyone in the business must have been well aware of the trouble Setanta were in.

Fred Swanson

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peteb2

I'm sure they would. Its already been discussed ad nauseum that beyond the moral outrage of policy holders, brokers have no liability here.