Santander has been forced to restrict sales of protection products through its branches due to a staff training issue.
COVER has learned that the exclusive agreement with Aviva that was signed last summer and commenced in June has had to be interrupted for the bank to re-train some staff.
A spokesperson for the bank told COVER: "We haven't pulled the agreement.
"Some of the advisers are having more training before continuing to sell it.
"We still have the agreement in place with Aviva and will continue to sell their products but while we re-train our staff the products won't be available in all of our branches."
At the time of writing Santander had not been able to confirm how many branches or staff members had been impacted.
Aviva said it was aware of the problem but Santander was dealing with it as it only affected the bank's staff.
"They are doing some training with their branch advisers so there's some temporary reduction in sales, but the products are still being sold through other retail channels," an Aviva spokesperson said.
"It's just a case of some sales training.
"We underwrite the products - the sales process they manage and obviously they want to do the best by their customers and are doing some extra training."
