Changes to Aviva policy documentation for Sanctions and Illegal Cultivation of Drugs

Authored by Aviva

We’ve made some additions and changes to our Digital Traded product documentation to make it clearer for our customers and keep in line with regulations.

Sanctions

What have we changed?

From 26 February 2024 a Sanctions section will be included in the statement of fact document – this will be an assumptive statement that businesses and/or individuals can attest to. We will be issuing a Notice to policyholders to advise customers that this has been added to their documents, and recommend that they speak to their broker if they can't comply.

Why have we made this change?

By adding this into our customer documentation, we are providing customers with clarity and transparency in the risks we are willing to cover, ensuring fair treatment of our customers.

The addition of this assumption in our digitally traded documentation will also bring consistency across the board with our offline and Mid-Market policies, where this change was implemented in June 2023.

Illegal Cultivation of Drugs

What have we changed?

We’ve updated the Illegal Cultivation of Drugs obligations under cover extension 15 of the Property Damage section in the policy wording, and we now include them in the policy schedule for our Property owners product. These changes come into effect on 26 February 2024.

We've updated these obligations to be clear that where they aren't complied with, the customer will lose the right to payment for any claim. These obligations are only applicable to Residential Units.

The wording for Illegal Cultivation of Drugs has been amended to reference cover for Commercial Premises. Cover has always been provided for commercial premises; this amend is just to clarify the cover intent. The obligations stated above do not apply to commercial premises.

To see full details on these changes, you can view them in your customers' policy schedule and under Cover Extension 15 of the Property Damage section in their policy wordings.

Why have we made this change?

Feedback from Technical Claims Specialists told us that there were claims where obligations hadn't been met (e.g. rent paid up front in cash for 6 months, no verification carried out on tenants, etc.) and that our wordings could be made clearer to emphasise the repercussions of not complying.

We also wanted to make it clearer to our customers on what they need to do for Illegal Cultivation of Drugs to be covered for their residential properties, which is why we’ve brought these obligations into the policy schedule.