An insurer ‘just doing it’ and cancelling a joint life policy meant a woman suffering economic abuse could ‘breathe again’, according to Lauren Garrett, head of financial services at Surviving Economic Abuse (SEA).
Garrett (pictured centre) told the story to highlight why insurers and the rest of the industry need to change long-held processes to tackle domestic abuse situations.
Garrett shared the Women In Protection (WIP) conference stage with Johnny Timpson, who is an advisory group member at SEA.
He warned protection network compliance directors to change their stance on restricting intermediaries from selling two single life policies, with the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) aware of the issues around economic abuse.
Timpson also made the call for insurers to “just do it” and bite the bullet of splitting dual life policies where there is evidence of economic abuse.
Deliberately weaponised
Elaborating on why ‘just doing it’ matters, Garrett gave the example of ‘Christine’, a victim/survivor, whose joint life policy was being deliberately weaponised by the abuser who used that to threaten to kill her and her children.
“Despite repeated attempts to tell the insurer that this was putting her and her children at risk of harm, she was constantly met with the response that he had to agree with that policy being cancelled,” Garrett said.
“And as a result of that, she also had to continue paying.
“So during those two years she paid for that policy, went back and forth asking for it to be cancelled.”
The result was that this put Christine into a financially difficult position, Garrett continued.
“Even though it was £30 a month, at that time she couldn’t afford £30 a month and all of her money and finances were being controlled,” she added.
‘This isn’t right’
But eventually after two years, Christine spoke to somebody who took the approach of just doing it.
“This isn’t right,” Garrett continued.
“We need to act outside our standard process here and provide the support that this customer needs in order to sleep at night.
“And so they stopped the payments. They tried to get in touch with the joint policyholder and when the joint policyholder didn’t respond, they cancelled the policy and she was able to breathe again.”