PPI Refunds

Many banks, building societies and insurance brokers have been miss selling Payment Protection Insurance (PPI). It was reported on the BBC news website that companies were still miss-selling right up until late 2008. One story posted on 28th October 2009 talks about how Insurance Broker Swinton has been asked to refund 350,000 customers that it sold PPI to between December 2006 and March 2008. They were found guilty of automatically including the insurance in quotes to customers. As well as being asked to refund the 350,000 customers they have been fined an additional £770,000.

Out of the policies Swinton sold very few have been paid out and some people are ineligible to make a claim at all. This can happen for instance if someone is self employed or gets fired from their job.

PPI can be including in many things including loans, credit cards, store cards, mortgages and in Swintons case on motor and home insurance quotes. They accumulated £7.8 from PPI sales. They have now apologised and set up a dedicated unit to deal with PPI cases.

If you are a customer of theirs and took out any kind of insurance in that time period you should make contact with them. You do need to apply with them for your refund. If you want to reclaim PPI you paid on a loan you may be better of getting help from a reputable PPI claims company.

According to the BBC website Alliance & Leicester was fined £7 million for training its staff to pressure customers who disputed the inclusion of this “optional” insurance policy.

I was actually victim to one of these high pressure sales calls and still to this day remember it clearly because it was such an unpleasant experience! They phoned me to tell me that I had been accepted for a loan which I was going to use to buy a new car but they were “worried” about how I would pay the loan if I was made redundant. The lady would not confirm if they would give me the loan without protection insurance in case I was made redundant. Eventually I gave up and said yes but then changed my answer on a form they sent me to fill in so narrowly escaped being miss sold to. I definitely would of reclaimed that PPI now after that experience if I had of paid for it. Lucky for me I had already heard and seen on the news what was happening. I still think I should be entitled to some sort of compensation for the experience. My memory isn’t great but that made an impact.

Again some more interesting statistics from the BBC website that might persuade you to put in that claim if you haven’t already, 1.3 million people signed up for policies believing they had to or that it would increase their chances of being approved.

"Credit card PPI is a modern day snake oil - it's a useless product, expensive and poorly designed," said Doug Taylor of Which?

"In this time of economic uncertainty, people are effectively throwing away £970 million each year, when they should be encouraged to seek independent financial advice about protecting their finances as a whole," he added.

UK consumers are less likely to spend on insurance then their European counter parts because they worry about if it will be paid up not. This time they were correct and this isn’t going to help the market. Even recent statistics show that people are still buying PPI policies under the believe that it is required or that it will help them be accepted for their loan or credit card.