Jurisdiction(s):
United Kingdom

Related legal acts

Key definition

Consumer definition

What does Consumer mean? A consumer is, in practice, an individual who acquires goods, services or digital content for personal use, not for the purposes of a trade, business, craft or profession. The precise meaning is statutory and context‑specific. England & Wales and Scotland: The Consumer Rights Act 2015, s2(3), defines a consumer as an individual acting for purposes wholly or mainly outside their trade, business, craft or profession (capturing mixed‑purpose purchases where the business purpose is not predominant). The Unfair Contract Terms Act 1977 instead asks whether a party “deals as consumer”, a distinct test relevant to exclusion and limitation clauses. The Sale of...

Consumer Insurance (Disclosure and Representations) Act 2012: scope, abolition of disclosure, reasonable care, proportionate remedies, basis clause ban, non-contracting out and burden of proof

Published by a LexisNexis Insurance & Reinsurance expert

Practice notes

Insurance contracts have long seemed enigmatic to law students and practising lawyers. The reason is that they are contracts of the utmost good faith. They are unlike ordinary agreements: they must be treated with exceptional care. The central element of the obligation of utmost good faith, as articulated in the Marine Insurance Act 1906 (MIA 1906), is the policyholder’s duty to volunteer information to the insurer that would ‘influence the judgment of a prudent insurer’ when deciding whether to accept the risk and what to charge for it (see: MIA 1906, s 18). This has always been a demanding requirement. In truth, it has long been a tall order. It expects the policyholder to second‑guess the insurer’s thinking and make disclosure on that basis. The insurer, by contrast, was free to sit back and remain passive, under no obligation to offer the policyholder any hints or prompts. It was straightforward for the policyholder to breach this duty, with severe consequences: any material non‑disclosure (honest, innocent, careless or otherwise) entitled the insurer to avoid the cover (MIA 1906, s 18(1)). For the policyholder, that could be a devastating outcome. A potentially catastrophic result for the policyholder...

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Alexander Rosenfield

Fenchurch Law

Alex is a Senior Associate at Fenchurch Law. He specialises in insurance coverage disputes for policyholders with a focus towards property damage claims. Prior to joining Fenchurch Law in 2017, Alex worked at Elborne Mitchell in the heart of the London insurance market. He trained with BPS Law LLP in Manchester, specialising in policyholder coverage work. Alex is passionate about delivering Fenchurch Law’s mission statement of levelling the playing field for policyholders and has been quoted in several of the country’s leading insurance publications and newspapers on policyholder coverage issues. Those include an article for the Guardian which highlighted the challenges of complying with ‘Unoccupied Buildings’ conditions at the height of the COVID-19 Pandemic. Alex graduated from the University of Birmingham in 2009, before completing the LPC at the College of Law in 2010. Away from his practice, Alex is a member of the Society of...

Web page updated on 21/05/2026

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