UK Insurance Limited · DRN-6138611

The complaint T’s complaint is about the way in which a commercial legal expenses insurance policy was sold to it by U K Insurance Limited (‘UKI’). T is a sole trader. Its complaint is brought by Miss F. In this complaint I shall refer to all submissions as being Miss F’s own for ease of reference. What happened Miss F took out a commercial legal expenses insurance policy with UKI. In doing so she says she was asked for the name of her business and her own name which she specified correctly. Miss F says that when the policy incepted. UKI transposed the name of the business alone as the policyholder rather than the correct name, which should have been Miss F because she was a sole trader. Aviva accept that the name of the business was wrongly specified but say this was down to an error on Miss F’s part and that the policyholder should always have been specified as being ‘Miss F trading as T’ because T is not a legal entity given Miss T is a sole trader. Miss T says the error was UKI’s and not her own when she applied for cover. Her concern is that this led to her legal expenses insurer declining her claim on the basis that she was not insured for the claim she wanted to make. The claim was for a problem in her name but the policy only specified T as the policyholder. Aviva say that the legal expenses insurer was wrong to decline cover, and they should have recognised that T is not a legal entity from the outset so claims in Miss F’s name ought to have been accepted. Whilst the legal expenses insurer maintained their position for some time, they did eventually accept they had wrongly declined the claim and that T is not a legal entity, so the correct interpretation was to accept the policy was in Miss F’s name, trading as T. Because of this UKI say the issue has been resolved. Miss F doesn’t agree and still feels UKI did something wrong and this caused her to have to challenge her legal expenses insurer unnecessarily, meaning she was left without legal representation in her dispute for a considerable period of time. Our investigator considered this complaint and concluded that the conduct of the legal expenses insurer was not something UKI were responsible for. Miss F doesn’t agree so the matter has been passed to me to determine. What I’ve decided – and why I’ve considered all the available evidence and arguments to decide what’s fair and reasonable in the circumstances of this complaint. Having done so, I don’t uphold this complaint. Before I explain why, I wish to acknowledge the volume of submissions Miss F has made as well as her strength of feeling about her complaint. Whilst I’ve read everything she’s said, I won’t be addressing each point. That’s not intended to be disrespectful. Rather it’s representative of the informal nature of the

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Financial Ombudsman Service. Instead, I’ll focus on the crux of Miss C’s complaint, namely whether UKI did something wrong. Miss C’s complaint is that she put in all of the correct information into her application for cover, but that UKI did something wrong by transposing her name with T’s name when listing it on the policy schedule. Even if I accept that that is the case here and that Miss F shouldn’t have listed the T’s name as ‘Miss F trading as T’ in addition to her own name, I’m not satisfied that this led to the problem Miss F experienced with her legal expenses insurance provider. Whilst it’s not within my remit here to determine her complaint against that insurer, it’s clear to me that T was a sole trader and therefore that the correct interpretation of its business name would be for an insurer to accept that it cannot trade as an entity separate from Miss F. As such the question of whether a claim should have been considered in Miss F’s sole name (provided it pertained to her business) was in my view self-evident. So, like the investigator, I don’t think UKI are to blame for this even if there was an error was on their part. The matter was easily remediated had the insurer acted correctly in the first instance and in this case was eventually accepted by the legal expenses’ insurer that they had not considered things correctly. The impact of the delay in accepting the position therefore lies with that insurer and not UKI. Because of this I don’t agree that UKI did something wrong, such that Miss F or T was caused any loss. My final decision For the reasons set out above, I don’t uphold T’s complaint against U K Insurance Limited. Under the rules of the Financial Ombudsman Service, I’m required to ask T to accept or reject my decision before 17 April 2026. Lale Hussein-Venn Ombudsman

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