Following on from my blog post yesterday about a strange call, I have now received a follow-up call.
If you haven’t read my first blog, put simply, I had a call from an unknown person saying they were obliged to inform me that following changes in legislation, they may be able to reduce my life insurance premiums. This time, the agent said that someone on my telephone number was interested in saving money on their life insurance.
The agent was call Rob (surname and contact number retained) who said he worked for Life Protect who he claimed were agents of Legal & General.
Rob didn’t know my name, he didn’t even know if I was the one that might have requested a call back to discuss the legislation changes that mean I might be overpaying on my current life insurance.
He seemed reluctant to disclose where he had obtained my number from; he said they used a number of ‘lead’ sources. When I asked him if it could be “The Review Experts” he confirmed that they did use this company and that this could be the source.
Someone (I suggest either Legal & General and/or FCA) needs to get a grip. The computer generated outbound call was in breach of the FCA Handbook and the follow-up call from Rob wasn’t any better. The FCA lays out specific rules about how financial products are promoted which are designed to protect customers from being misled into buying products they don’t really need or that are poor value. Recent examples are of course PPI and more recently payday lending.
I have searched for Life Protect online. There is a www.life-protect.co.uk website that “is the direct Insurance provider arm of Core Financial LLP, who are authorised and regulated by the Financial Conduct Authority” but this shows logos of many insurers. The FCA register has a Life Protect Limited as an ex Appointed Representative but I can’t see who of, and anyway, it has closed down.
Customers need to beware of responding to an unsolicited call, and in particular, shouldn’t deal with a company they can’t easily identify or one that doesn’t have good existing customer reviews that have been independently compiled.
We will be passing this information on to the FCA, but in the meantime, beware!
