Tweet
Hi everyone.,
I'm going through rather a difficult period right now. Basically I was dismissed from a financial instituation a few months back (due to personal debt I must stress, and not because I ever did anything to affect a customer at all). Just thought I'd get that out of the way bearing in mind Banks in the UK are hardly popular these days.
Anyway, I'm taking the said Financial institution to an employment tribunal for unfair dismissal. For anyone not familiar with these, taking on a company with seemingly bottomless resources and 100,000 or more employess is scary to say the least.
After receiving the first solicitors bill, once I'd got over the shock of how much it was all costing I did some reading, and I found out the following -
My House Insurance Cover provides up to £100K of Legal Expenses Insurance which can be used to fight employment related disputes e.g. Wrongful, unfair, constructive dismissals, redundancy, discrimination etc.
After working finance myself for nearly 27 years, I had no idea my house insurance would potentially help with claims like this!
If there's ANYONE on here, or if you know someone in this position, I would urge you to please make them aware of this as without this cover I would have run out of money well before the hearing. As it is now, I do still need to pay the bill I've run up already, but future costs will be met by the insurer..
There are conditions in place, however and I'd like to try to help anyone who's interested how to get these claims agreed.
i) Obvious really, but you need to check your policy to see if this is included. If it's not, then you can't claim. You can add the cover to an existing plan, but often they have an exclusion period to stop people adding the benefit then making an immediate claim.
ii) You need to report the event and start making a claim within a specified period. Mine was 180 days.
iii) This is the biggie. The insurers usually make use of a 'panel' of solicitors to initially review your claim, and in my insurers case, they will only consider a claim where the solicitor thinks there is at least a 51% chance of the legal action succeeding. Often, I'm told the solicitors they use are not as generous as a third party solicitor might be (answers why on a postcard please?). The trick is to get an assessment of the dispute done independently before submitting your claim, and provide this to the insurer!
No insurer will ever accuse another of lying, and this approach means that they are effectively forced into accepting a claim which their own solicitor might have declined. It's possible that you may need to pay for the initial assessment, but this is much safer than risking your own money fighting the case, or trying to do it yourself!
Finding this out has basically meant that my insurer will now have to foot the bill for the remaining legal expenses up to £100K which I could not even begin to afford myself. Massive weight off my shoulders, and it means now that I can get professional legal representation every step of the way.
Also, in my case, the really funny part of all this is that my home insurance was still with the company I used to work for, so they're in the ludicrous situation of having to pay my costs under the insurance cover, their own legal costs as well and I've been able to negotiate my own solicitor in order to avoid any accusations of a conflict of interest. Win or lose, it's going to cost them a fortune...................... Plus, of course the settlement assuming I succeed (which my solicitor thinks is pretty likely).
Good luck everyone, and if anyone finds any of this useful I'd be delighted.
I'm going through rather a difficult period right now. Basically I was dismissed from a financial instituation a few months back (due to personal debt I must stress, and not because I ever did anything to affect a customer at all). Just thought I'd get that out of the way bearing in mind Banks in the UK are hardly popular these days.
Anyway, I'm taking the said Financial institution to an employment tribunal for unfair dismissal. For anyone not familiar with these, taking on a company with seemingly bottomless resources and 100,000 or more employess is scary to say the least.
After receiving the first solicitors bill, once I'd got over the shock of how much it was all costing I did some reading, and I found out the following -
My House Insurance Cover provides up to £100K of Legal Expenses Insurance which can be used to fight employment related disputes e.g. Wrongful, unfair, constructive dismissals, redundancy, discrimination etc.
After working finance myself for nearly 27 years, I had no idea my house insurance would potentially help with claims like this!
If there's ANYONE on here, or if you know someone in this position, I would urge you to please make them aware of this as without this cover I would have run out of money well before the hearing. As it is now, I do still need to pay the bill I've run up already, but future costs will be met by the insurer..
There are conditions in place, however and I'd like to try to help anyone who's interested how to get these claims agreed.
i) Obvious really, but you need to check your policy to see if this is included. If it's not, then you can't claim. You can add the cover to an existing plan, but often they have an exclusion period to stop people adding the benefit then making an immediate claim.
ii) You need to report the event and start making a claim within a specified period. Mine was 180 days.
iii) This is the biggie. The insurers usually make use of a 'panel' of solicitors to initially review your claim, and in my insurers case, they will only consider a claim where the solicitor thinks there is at least a 51% chance of the legal action succeeding. Often, I'm told the solicitors they use are not as generous as a third party solicitor might be (answers why on a postcard please?). The trick is to get an assessment of the dispute done independently before submitting your claim, and provide this to the insurer!
No insurer will ever accuse another of lying, and this approach means that they are effectively forced into accepting a claim which their own solicitor might have declined. It's possible that you may need to pay for the initial assessment, but this is much safer than risking your own money fighting the case, or trying to do it yourself!
Finding this out has basically meant that my insurer will now have to foot the bill for the remaining legal expenses up to £100K which I could not even begin to afford myself. Massive weight off my shoulders, and it means now that I can get professional legal representation every step of the way.
Also, in my case, the really funny part of all this is that my home insurance was still with the company I used to work for, so they're in the ludicrous situation of having to pay my costs under the insurance cover, their own legal costs as well and I've been able to negotiate my own solicitor in order to avoid any accusations of a conflict of interest. Win or lose, it's going to cost them a fortune...................... Plus, of course the settlement assuming I succeed (which my solicitor thinks is pretty likely).
Good luck everyone, and if anyone finds any of this useful I'd be delighted.
Comment