Since January 2010, the DAS Legal Protection Insurance has been available to you as part of your FMB membership.
A Legal Protection Insurance policy helps you to meet the cost of taking legal action or defending your rights if you have a dispute with another party. In collaboration with AON, the FMB negotiated a tailored product with leading specialist insurer DAS Legal Expenses Insurance Company to provide cover that goes way beyond the limited legal defence cover that you might find under your liability insurance.
As the DAS Legal Protection Insurance has proved to be a very popular benefit amongst members we have negotiated improvements to the policy which now includes:
-
After the Event Cover (ATE) - DAS has a system in place which enables certain claims to be considered on an ‘after the event’ basis, if there is no cover on the ‘before the event’ policy. This applies in cases where there is absolutely no dispute over workmanship but instead, clearly over payment and where the client has refused adjudication
In summary, ATE cover as advised by DAS is as follows:
-
The case is initially assessed by a DAS solicitor and is judeged as having a good likelyhood of success through the courts
-
The Member is pursuing and not defending a case. Eg. An FMB member is pursuing an outstanding debt before the customer has filed a claim for poor quality workmanship. (DAS could not handle a counter claim for the member if their customer had already taken legal action)
-
The amount in dispute exceeds £5,000
-
The contract relates to domestic works (not commercial contracts). Further improvements to the policy also include:
-
Mileage claims on RICS Adjudication matters – DAS will pay for all reasonable costs up to £100
-
Motor Prosecution Defence cover – DAS has extended the cover to include criminal prosecutions arising from the use of motor vehicles. This will include criminal prosecutions following speeding, mobile phone offences, overladen vehicle weights, etc.
POLICY WORDING
Read and download the DAS Summary of Cover (PDF, 263 KB) and the DAS Commercial Legal Protection Policy (PDF, 327 KB).
The required documents (‘Summary of Cover PDF, 263 KB’ or ‘Policy Wording PDF, 327 KB’) replace those issued to you in January 2010. The new documents are dated (March 2011), in order to distinguish them from the previous versions.
Please destroy your earlier copies.
OTHER FMB MEMBER BENEFITS
The FMB works hard to source valuable benefits for its members, to help them run successful businesses. They range from the legal expenses insurance detailed in this article to business banking at preferential rates courtesy of Santander and discounts on fuel from TOTALCARD.
For a full list of benefits YOU COULD BE USING, visit: www.fmb.org.uk/member-benefits.
*You have to be a full FMB member to use these benefits.
