The Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) has today fined Moorhouse Group Limited (Moorhouse) £159,300 for failures in relation to the oversight and control of its telephone sales and in particular the sale of commercial vehicle add-on insurance products during 2012.

During 2012 the insurance company failed to provide a quality assurance processes to monitor the telephone sales process, particularly around the disclosure of the products’ limitations and exclusions, which potentially could have affected whether any claims made by a customer in the future would be accepted. The insurer’s senior management also failed to give sufficient attention to compliance issues and did not take adequate steps to address them.

When assessing this case, the FCA concluded that the insurer failed to implement appropriate systems and controls to make sure customers were provided with the appropriate level of information to enable them to make an informed choice. This lack of monitoring and oversight put customers at the risk of mis-selling and poor consumer outcomes.

In 2013 the FCA reviewed the sales process of general insurance add-on products. It emerged that generally, insurers were providing insufficient information concerning the features of add-on products before the completion of a sale.

The full details of this case can be found here.