You paid the premiums for years; now the claim is in and the insurer says no. Declined claims, underpayment and avoidance arguments are where policyholders discover that insurance is a contract — one insurers interpret in their own favour until someone pushes back properly. Connaught Law's insurance dispute solicitors act for businesses and individuals across the UK doing exactly that.
· Regulated by the Solicitors Regulation Authority · Legal 500 · Lexcel
How We Can Help
Declined & Repudiated Claims
Insurers decline claims on exclusions read at their widest, conditions elevated into escape hatches, and causation theories built for the outcome. Policy wording rarely reads only one way — and the law construes genuine ambiguity against the party who drafted it. We re-read the policy the way a court would, and put the decline under pressure it frequently doesn't survive.
Avoidance & Non-Disclosure Arguments
The nuclear option — treating the policy as if it never existed over something you allegedly failed to disclose — is now tightly constrained: the Insurance Act 2015 and consumer legislation demand proportionate remedies and put real burdens on the insurer, including proving what it would actually have done differently. Many avoidances assert pre-reform law by habit. We hold them to the current one.
Underpayment, Delay & Underinsurance
Short of declining, insurers underpay: low valuations, aggressive betterment deductions, average applied for alleged underinsurance, and delay used as leverage against policyholders who need the money now. The law now implies a term that valid claims be paid within a reasonable time — with damages for late payment — and a properly evidenced counter-position usually moves the number. Settle from strength, not exhaustion.
Property, Home & Specialist Policies
Fire, flood and escape-of-water claims declined or shaved; subsidence arguments; high-value home and contents disputes; and the specialist lines — professional indemnity, liability, latent defects — where coverage questions decide who really bears a loss. Where the dispute began with an injury claim, our personal injury team works the other side of the same street.
Ombudsman vs Court
Consumers and small businesses can take insurers to the Financial Ombudsman Service — free, fairness-based, but capped and subject to strict deadlines after the insurer's final response. Larger and commercial disputes belong in court, where the policy is construed properly and awards are uncapped. We choose the route by recovery, and prepare every FOS complaint as if a court will eventually read it — because sometimes one does.
How We Work
Send us the policy, the claim and the insurer's letter. We give you a coverage view worth having — does the decline hold, what's the claim genuinely worth, and which route recovers it — then we take over the correspondence, because insurers negotiate differently when the other side reads policies for a living. On funding: options including conditional fee arrangements are considered case by case, and we're straight with you about what your claim supports before anything is spent.
Why Connaught Law
01Policy-first analysisEvery dispute starts with what the wording actually says — read the way courts read it, not the way insurers hope.
02Current law, enforcedInsurance Act remedies, late-payment damages, consumer protections — the modern rules, held against old habits.
03Senior attention throughoutYour dispute is run by our experienced litigation team, not passed down — with direct access to the person handling it.
04Quantum built properlyValuations, BI calculations, expert evidence — the number is half the fight, and we arrive with ours proven.
Fee structures and funding options are set out on our fees page — discussed openly before you commit to anything.
Frequently Asked Questions
My insurer has refused my claim — what can I do?
Don't accept the first no: require the full reasons in writing, then have the policy and decline reviewed properly — a substantial share of repudiations rest on strained readings or outdated law and reverse under pressure. From there the route is complaint, ombudsman or court, chosen by the claim's size and strength. Move promptly; deadlines attach to each.
Do you act no win, no fee on insurance disputes?
For suitable cases, conditional fee arrangements can be available — it depends on the claim's merits, value and evidence, which is exactly what our initial review establishes. Whatever the funding, you'll know the structure and your exposure before we start, not after.
Can my insurer cancel my policy for non-disclosure?
Only within modern limits: for consumers the misrepresentation must generally be careless or deliberate — honest mistakes on questions never clearly asked don't qualify — and remedies must be proportionate, often adjusting rather than avoiding the policy. Businesses have fair-presentation duties with their own balancing rules. Avoidance asserted broadly is frequently avoidance done wrongly.
How long do I have to challenge an insurer's decision?
Court claims generally run six years from the breach, but the practical clocks are shorter: ombudsman complaints must follow within months of a final response letter, policies impose their own notification conditions, and evidence of loss degrades. Treat the decline letter as the starting gun.
Claim declined, delayed or lowballed?
Send us the policy and the insurer's letter. We'll tell you whether the decline holds, what the claim is worth and how to recover it — before you commit to anything.
Get Expert Advice