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For people with criminal records
For people with criminal records

Category: News for other groups

Insurers are not following good practice when dealing with criminal records

Last month, the Financial Conduct Authority published an occasional paper on access to financial services. I fed into this work, particularly focusing on the issues people with convictions face in accessing insurance. So it was good to see the authors include an especially challenging section of the report focused at a lack of buy-in to industry guidance.

There was heavy reference to the work that Unlock has done with the Association of British Insurers (ABI), including developing good practice, but highlighted how:

“it is still commonplace for proposal forms to have questions such as “have you ever been convicted””

The ABI guidance states that it is good practice to refer only to ‘unspent’ convictions, so clearly insurers are not doing this.

guidance
Extract from the FCA occasional paper

Although it didn’t name the companies involved, the FCA paper included two anonymous examples of current questions by home insurers and motor insurers.

question
Extract from the FCA occasional paper

The poor wording of questions by insurers is a major problem. Unlock’s helpline regularly gets contacted by people using insurance websites and asking us for clarity about what they do and don’t need to disclose. Very often, this is because the insurance company hasn’t made it clear that they don’t need to disclose convictions that are now spent under the Rehabilitation of Offenders Act 1974.

This is something we’re looking at. We’ve had one our helpline advisors do some research into the questions asked by insurers, and we’re in the process of pulling this together and analysing the findings.

As an aside, it was good to see a number of other issues featured in the occasional paper, including:

  1. The numbers of people affected – In the infographic that the FCA used, they said that 750,000 people with unspent convictions and their families can struggle. This comes from a figure we presented a couple of years ago, and this is a conservative estimate of the numbers with unspent convictions. Although this figure is an underestimate for another reason – it doesn’t include those that are potentially covered by some of the misleading questions that insurers ask (see below). When this is taken into account, the numbers affected by the practice of insurers runs into the millions, given there’s over 10.5 million people in the UK with a criminal record.
  2. The lack of insurance products for people with unspent convictions
  3. How people with convictions can be good customers

More information

  1. You can find out more about the FCA occasional paper.
  2. There are details of our policy work on fair access to insurance and dealing with misleading questions.
  3. For practical self-help information on insurance, visit the information section on our website.
  4. There is practical guidance for insurers

Briefing for insurers on criminal convictions

Back in late January, we took part in a briefing event for the insurance industry on criminal convictions and insurance.

In our day-to-day work, and especially through our helpline, we regularly come across examples of poor practice by insurers. Whether it’s a poor understanding of when convictions become spent, insurers insisting that spent convictions need to be disclosed or claims handlers telling those who make a claim that they have to provide their full police record. All of these are situations that people with convictions regularly face. We want to put a stop to this kind of practice.

That’s why we were pleased to take part in the event in January, hosted by the Association of British Insurers (ABI). We had three main aims:

  1. To help insurers’ understanding of disclosure periods for offences under the Rehabilitation of Offenders Act 1974
  2. To promote good practice when asking for criminal records
  3. To provide guidance to insurers on the proper channels for accessing unspent conviction histories

It was good to see a number of big insurers represented, and it’s clear that there’s a lot more work to do.

We’ve published the briefing that we prepared for the event. We’re also reviewing the questions that insurance companies ask and are working on those examples that we come across that are misleading.

Ultimately, we want to see insurers take a fairer approach towards people with convictions.

More information

New guidance for insurers on (not) using enforced subject access to get details of criminal records

We’re pleased to see that the Association of British Insurers has produced guidance for insurers which clarifies the position for insurers after section 56 of the Data Protection Act 1998 came into force earlier this year.

For far too long now, some insurance companies have relied on dubious practices when dealing with claims, relying on individuals to get a copy of their full police record, which runs the risk that they take into account spent convictions which the individual didn’t need to disclose. Since earlier this year, this practice was made illegal.

This guidance should help insurers to make sure that they operate fairer practices when dealing with individuals that have criminal records.

 

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