01323 648000

Complaints and Privacy Policy

COMPLAINTS

It is our policy to promote the highest standard of service for our clients. We endeavour to ensure that all complaints are resolved satisfactorily and in a timely manner.

If you have a complaint about our services, you may contact the member of our staff with whom you normally deal.

Alternatively please contact us at the address below:

Professional Insurance Agents Ltd
Unit 9, Pacific House,
1 Easter Island Place,
Sovereign Harbour,
East Sussex, BN23 6FA
Phone: 01323 648000.

You may make your complaint either orally or in writing. We will acknowledge receipt of your complaint promptly in writing and give you our response at the time, if we can.

If following receipt of our final response or after eight weeks if we have not yet provided you with our final response, if you are an eligible complainant, you have the right to refer your complaint to the Financial Ombudsman Service (FOS). Further information is available on their website below.

Financial Ombudsman Service, Exchange Tower, London. E14 9SR 0800 023 4567 www.financial-ombudsman.org.uk. An Eligible Complainant is defined as:

  • Any private individual
  • Any business with a turnover of less than £6.5 million and less than 50 staff or has a balance sheet total or less than £5 million. (small business)
  • A charity which has an annual income of less than £6.5 million
  • A trustee of a trust which has a net asset value of less than £5 million
  • An individual who has given a guarantee or security in respect of an obligation or liability of a small business.

IF POLICIES CAN BE PURCHASED VIA INTERNET:

The European Commission also provides an on-line dispute resolution (ODR) platform that allows consumers to submit their complaint through a central site, which will forward the complaint to the right Alternative Dispute Resolution (ADR) scheme. For more information about ODR please click here.

PRIVACY NOTICE

We are part of the Brown & Brown (Europe) Limited (Brown & Brown) Group of Companies, for a full list of Brown & Brown trading companies please visit www.bbrowneurope.com/tradingentities

This privacy notice tells you what to expect when Brown & Brown collects and processes your personal information. We take the protection of your data seriously and are committed to being transparent with you about the data we collect and how it is used and shared. We are committed to ensuring that we meet all our obligations under relevant Data Protection laws, including the United Kingdom (UK) and European Union (EU) General Data Protection Regulations (GDPR) and UK Data Protection Act 2018, as amended from time to time.

INFORMATION WE COLLECT AND FROM WHOM

We will receive personal information about you, when you contact us for example by requesting or obtaining a quote, purchasing a product from us or from one of our partners or using one of our websites. The information could include:

Individual details

Name, address (including proof of address), other contact details (e.g. email and telephone numbers), gender, marital status, date and place of birth, nationality, employer, job title and employment history, and family details, including their relationship to you.

Identification details

Identification numbers issued by government bodies or agencies, including your national insurance number, passport number, tax identification number and driving licence number.

Financial information

Bank account or payment card details, income or other financial information.

Risk details

Information about you (and others insured under the policy) which we need to collect in order to assess the risk to be insured and provide a quote. This may include data relating to health, criminal convictions, or other special categories of personal data (see below). For certain types of policy, this could also include telematics data.

Policy information

Information about the quotes you receive and policies you take out.

Credit and anti-fraud data

Credit history, credit score, sanctions and criminal offences, and information received from various anti-fraud databases relating to you.

Previous and current claims

Information about previous and current claims, (including other unrelated insurances), which may include data relating to your health, criminal convictions, or other special categories of personal data (see below) and in some cases, surveillance reports.

In certain circumstances we collect special categories of data including health, criminal convictions, racial or ethnic origin, political opinions, religious or philosophical beliefs, trade union membership, genetic data, biometric, or data concerning sex life or sexual orientation.

We will collect personal information about you from you directly but also potentially from your family members, employer or representative, other insurance market participants, credit reference agencies, anti-fraud databases, sanctions lists, court judgements and other judicial databases, government agencies such as the DVLA and HMRC, open electoral register and any other publicly available data sources. In addition, in the event of a claim, we will get information from third parties including the other party to the claim (claimant / defendant), witnesses, experts (including medical experts), loss adjustors, solicitors, and claims handlers.

HOW AND WHY WE USE THIS INFORMATION

We will process any personal data lawfully under one or more of the following bases:

Performance of a Contract

the processing is necessary for a contract we have with you, or because you have asked us to take specific steps before entering into a contract.

Compliance with a Legal obligation

the processing is necessary for us to comply with the law (not including contractual obligations).

Legitimate interests

the processing is necessary for our legitimate interests pursued by us. In such cases our legitimate interests are as follows:

  • To add value to your product by offering you other general insurance products.
  • To provide excellent service to our customers by ensuring they are fully informed about all of our products.
  • To engage in activities to improve and adapt the range of products and services we offer and to help our business grow.
  • To investigate and prevent potential fraudulent and other illegal activity.

Consent

where you have given clear consent for us to process your personal data for a specific purpose. In circumstances where we need your consent to process data we will make this clear, unambiguous and you will have to pro-actively agree to the processing. We can seek your consent within a written or electronic document or verbally. Where processing is based on consent, you can withdraw your consent to processing at any time so that we stop that particular processing.

Necessary for reasons of substantial public interest

under the UK Data Protection Act 2018 processing for an insurance purpose is included within this basis when processing special category and conviction data. This enables us to process certain special category data without your explicit consent.

We will use personal information about you primarily in connection with the provision of insurance, namely:

  • Establishing and maintaining communications with you;
  • Arranging insurance cover (issuing quotations, renewals, policy administration);
  • Handling claims;
  • Undertaking anti-fraud, sanction, anti-money laundering and other checks to protect against fraud, suspicious or other illegal activities;
  • Collecting, forwarding and refunding premiums;
  • Facilitating premium finance arrangements;
  • Processing transactions through service providers;
  • Credit assessments and other background checks;
  • Where we believe it is necessary to meet legal, security, processing and regulatory requirements;
  • Business transfers where we sell whole or part of our business and/or assets to a third party purchaser to allow the purchaser to administer your insurances;
  • Marketing and client profiling;
  • Allowing our group and associated companies to notify you of certain products or services offered by them;
  • Research and statistical analysis; and
  • Building databases for use by us and others we may share information with.

We may monitor calls, emails, text messages and other communications with you. When you contact us we may keep a record of that correspondence and any information provided to us during that or any subsequent communication.

Please make sure that anyone else who is insured under your policy has provided you with consent to provide their personal information to us. It is important that you show this Privacy Notice to anyone else who is insured under your policy, including, for example, any named drivers under a motor policy or anyone living at the property insured under a household policy.

HOW WE SHARE THIS INFORMATION

In using personal data for the above purposes, we will disclose personal data to third parties including insurers, reinsurers, intermediaries or other brokers; outsourcers, sub-contractors, agents and service providers; claim handlers; premium finance providers; professional advisers and auditors. Third parties to whom we disclose personal data are required by law and contractual undertakings to keep personal data confidential and secure, and to use and disclose it for purposes that a reasonable person would consider appropriate in the circumstances, in compliance with all applicable legislation.

We may share and aggregate information about you from across the Brown & Brown Group of companies, including personal information held within the Group relating to other policies held with us, quotes or claims details and, we may use this information to:

  • help us identify products and services that could be of interest to you, to tailor and package our products and services; to determine pricing and/or offer available discounts; and
  • conduct customer research and develop marketing campaigns.

We and/or other parties to whom we disclose personal data, may use your information for purposes such as statistical and trend research and analysis which might include computerised processes which profile you. Automatic profiling helps firms to understand, predict and forecast customer preferences and to improve the products and services they offer and to assess which products might be most suitable for you.

RETENTION OF YOUR PERSONAL DATA

We will keep your personal data only for so long as is necessary and for the purpose for which it was originally collected. In particular, for so long as there is any possibility that either you or we may wish to bring a legal claim under this insurance, or where we are required to keep your personal data due to legal or regulatory reasons.

We will endeavour to keep your information accurate and whenever you inform us about any changes we will update this information at the earliest opportunity. Please help us to do this by letting us know whenever there are changes to your personal data. If you are providing information about someone else you confirm that they have appointed you to act for them, to consent to the processing of their personal data including special categories of personal data and that you have informed them of our identity and the purposes (as set out in this Privacy Policy) for which their personal data will be processed.

DATA TRANSFERS

We may need to transfer your data to other organisations which are located outside of the European Economic Area (EEA). These countries’ data protection laws may not offer the same level of protection for personal data as offered in the EEA. Those transfers would always be made in compliance with relevant data protection legislation and we would ensure that appropriate safeguards to protect your personal data were put in place.

YOUR RIGHTS AND CONTACT DETAILS OF THE ICO

If you have any questions or complaints in relation to our use of your personal data or you wish to withdraw your consent to processing, please contact the data protection contact named at the top of this Notice or contact us at ellie@professionalinsuranceagents.co.uk. Alternatively, you have the right to lodge a complaint with the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) at www.ico.org.uk or 0303 1231113 (local rate)/01625 545745 (national rate).

Under certain conditions, you have the right to require us to:

  • provide you with further details on the use we make of your personal data/special category of data;
  • provide you with a copy of the personal data that you have provided to us;
  • update any inaccuracies in the personal data we hold;
  • provide you with your personal data in a structured format
  • delete any special category of data/personal data that we no longer have a lawful ground to use;
  • where processing is based on consent, to withdraw your consent so that we stop that particular processing;
  • object to any processing based on the legitimate interests ground unless our reasons for undertaking that processing outweigh any prejudice to your data protection rights; and
  • restrict how we use your personal data whilst a complaint is being investigated.

In certain circumstances, we can need to restrict the above rights in order to safeguard the public interest (e.g. the prevention or detection of crime) and our interests (e.g. the maintenance of legal privilege).

WHO TO CONTACT ABOUT YOUR PERSONAL DATA

Use the contact details in the Contact us section for any questions or concerns relating to this Privacy Notice or our data protection practices, or to make a request relating to your rights such as a subject access request.

Our Brown & Brown Group Data Protection Officer can be contacted at:
data.protection@grpgroup.co.uk
Brown & Brown (Europe) Ltd
7th Floor
Corn Exchange
55 Mark Lane
London
EC3R 7NE

CHANGES TO OUR PRIVACY NOTICE

This Privacy Policy was last updated on 10/08/2023.

We review this Privacy Policy regularly and reserve the right to make changes at any time to take account of changes in our business activities, legal requirements, and the manner in which we process Personal Information. We will place updates on this website and where appropriate we will give reasonable notice of any changes.