Fined PPI Providers Add Weight to Your case for a Refund

If you have ever tried to claim on a payment protection insurande policy when you became ill or unemployed you will know it is practically impossible to do. There are so many exclusions and omissions and hidden clauses that hardly anyone could possibly make a succesful claim. And that is the way they were designed. It is not surprising then that providers have been heavily fined.

Several major banks and lenders, including Alliance & Leicester, Egg and Capital One have been fined for “not treating customers fairly”, and more are added every day. The regulator, the FSA, has said it wants to see better practice and has fined several companies for failing to treat their customers fairly. More fines, which could be for up to £1 million, are expected.

Who’s been fined?
* Capital One: Fined £175,000 in February 2007 for failing to ensure that 50,000 customers buying credit cards and loans between January 2005 and April 2006 received important information about the policy.
* GE Capital Bank Ltd: (supplies cards for Asda, Comet, Debenhams and Topshop among others): Fined £610,000 in January 2007 for inappropriate sales of its store cards and credit cards.

* Redcats: Fined £270,000 in December 2006 for also not having adequate systems and controls in place to minimise the risk of unsuitable sales.

* Egg: Fined £721,000 in Dec 2008 for serious failings in its credit card PPI sales by telephone between Jan 05 and Dec 07. Egg has said it will be writing to customers, asking them to call a dedicated number if they are concerned they were mis-sold PPI, and will compensate where appropriate.
* Alliance and Leicester (A&L): Fined £7 million, the highest fine to date by far, in Oct 2008 for serious failings in its PPI telephone sales between Jan 05 and Dec 07. A&L has said it will be writing to all the customers concerned.

* 5 motor retailers: GK Group Limited, George White Motors Limited, Ringways Garages (Leeds) Limited, Ringways Garages (Doncaster) Limited and Park’s of Hamilton (Holdings) Limited were fined a total of more than £175,000 in Aug 2008 for exposing a total of 2,175 customers to the risk of being sold unsuitable PPI policies.* Liverpool Victoria: Fined £840,000 in July 2008 for serious failings in the sale of single premium PPI on telephone loans sold between 14 January 2005 and 8 August 2007. It has also agreed to compensate customers if their policy is not appropriate and to refund interest automatically.* Land of Leather Ltd: Fined £210,000 in May 2008 for allowing its sales force to sell PPI, between May 2006 and Feb 2007, without effective monitoring or training.* HFC Bank, also trading as “Household Bank” and “Beneficial Finance”: Fined £1,085,000 in January 2008 for putting customers at an unacceptable risk of being sold PPI when it was not suitable for them. Failings took place in branches between Jan 2005 and May 2007.
* Regency Mortgage Corporation: Fined £56,000 in December 2006 for not collecting sufficient information during a PPI sale to ensure its recommendations met customers’ demands and needs.
* Loans.co.uk: Fined £455,000 in October 2006 for not having appropriate systems and controls to minimise the risk of unsuitable sales.

If you are a customer of one of these companies it may have already been in touch with you, but if it hasn’t you should definitely send a asking for justification that your policy was sold with your best interests in mind. Other companies are likely to be fined too. The FSA is likely to announce further fines, this is important as it hugely strengthens your claim for a refund of your payment protection insurance policy.

Rip Off Payment Protection Insurance- Can YOU Claim?

It is easy to claim back mis-sold PPI. Very few people have been able to claim on this insurance and Lenders have been fined MILLIONS in the high court for selling it to people who DID NOT need it or whom they knew would be NEVER be able to claim on it as they were self -employed, about to retire, or already had pre-exting medical conditions which meant they could never claim anyway!

It is a NATIONAL SCANDAL! And you can claim it all back! FREE.

The Competition Commission has released a damming report following its investigation into the Payment Protection Insurance (PPI) market.

The Competition Commission said in its summary; we provisionally found that each credit provider and financial intermediary faces little competition for the sale of Payment Protection Insurance (PPI) when it is sold in combination with the credit it insures. As a result of this lack of competition, it is highly profitable to distribute PPI. We estimated that the 12 largest distributors of PPI made profits in excess of the cost of £1.4 billion in 2006. We found that there were features of relevant markets which resulted in consumers facing higher prices and less choice. Not only was the matter of competition a factor in this investigation but the Citizens Advice Bureau issued a super-complaint which highlighted not only consumers paying excessively high prices for PPI but that consumers were also often mis-sold PPI by companies using pressure and unfair sales tactics.

Claim Back Mis-sold PPI.

The mis-selling of payment protection insurance has been called one of the worst financial mis-selling scandals of all time.

The premium for a loan is usually added to the loan meaning that the customer also paid interest on the insurance policy! Great news for the lenders. Bad news for the consumer.

Banks and other lenders made vast sums of money from the sale of PPI Policies and charge extortionate rates for the insurance which rarely pays out because of the restrictions and exclusions that were designed to stop people being able to claim.

There are many ways in which each PPI policy may qualify as a mis-sold policy. Typically lenders saying, untruthfully, that the PPI was needed to qualify for the loan, or not giving borrowers the chance to look elsewhere for PPI. Other failings on the part of the lender may have included selling a single premium policy that is paid up-front, or selling a policy to someone who is outside the eligible age range to benefit from the policy. Perhaps most extreme for mis-selling a policy designed to cover people for loss of earnings from employment, was to sell to people who were unemployed or self-employed, rendering the policy meaningless.

The premium on credit cards is usually added to the monthly repayment figure and this can run into thousands if you have had the card a long time and keep a high balance. The premium is usually a percentage of the balance. For example £1.00 per £100. You might think “Well, that’s only 1%”, but if you have a balance of £1000 you will be paying £10.00 per £1000. If you have a £10 000 balance that amounts to £100 on top of the normal payments.

Mis-selling scandal

Many people do not even realise they have PPI. Many more have no idea how much it has really cost them as it is often very unclear. Furthermore, lenders made it difficult to cancel when people do realise just how much the PPI has cost them.

It is up to the seller to make sure you have been fully informed of all of the restrictions. Another is if you have a pre-existing illness then you will not be able to claim.

There are over 10 reasons why PPI policy might have been mis-sold, so if you are like the rest of the UK population there is a very high chance you will be eligible for a reclaim.

The good news is that you can claim it all back with interest and the commission paid to the lender who sold it.

Helping you to Choose

Some Very Important Straightforward Information

1. There is a good chance some of your loan or credit card or even your mortgage agreement cannot be enforced by your lender
2. More and more people are finding they don’t have to pay back their debts, because they are unenforceable.
3. There is a right way and a wrong way to approach your lenders in order to make your loans unenforceable
4. Many new companies have started up in business offering to approach the lenders on behalf of people just like you
5. Some of these companies deliver a better service than others
6. You have the power to choose which company you use, but it can be very confusing as there are so many of them
7. ClaimsCompare.co.uk offers FREE, unbiased guidance on what to look for and which questions you should ask your Credit Finance Company before you claim.

What is Payment Protection Insurance?

Have you ever borrowed money in the form of credit cards, a loan or a mortgage? If so you may have been sold Personal Protection Insurance (PPI) and you could be owed thousands of pounds in compensation. Payment Protection Insurance protects a borrower’s ability to maintain repayments and helps them avoid getting into debt should they be unable to keep up their repayments due to accident, sickness or unemployment. Payment Protection Insurance is also known as: Accident, Sickness, Unemployment Cover; Redundancy Protection; Loan Protection and Mortgage Payment Cover.

Policies are available to protect most forms of personal credit, including mortgages, personal loans and credit card repayments. Cover is often purchased at the time the finance arrangement is made, but may be available at a later date or taken out as a stand-alone policy.

The Financial Services Authority recently carried out an investigation into the selling of PPI. They found that tens of thousands of people could have received bad advice and are therefore able to claim compensation. If you have or are borrowing money for any of the following reasons then you may have PPI and could be owed thousands of pounds in compensation:

• Consolidation loan
• Loan for a car
• Credit cards
• Personal loan
• Mortgage

Of course, PPI could be very beneficial, but if you are not careful, it can also be very expensive. Inevitably, there is also the usual list of exclusions to look out for. For example:

• Consumers must not be aware of impending unemployment
• Policies do not usually cover unemployment occurring within an initial period of time
• Policies exclude claims arising from pre-existing medical conditions
• Claims that result from your own actions will not be covered.

Like thousands of others, you may have been given bad advice. Were you told about the costs, exclusions, charges or alternative (potentially cheaper) products available to you?
Even better, it will not normally cost you anything in front fees to find out how much you are owed.

That’s because most claims companies operate a no win – no fee service, so you only pay a percentage of anything they claim back. If they don’t claim back anything, and then you don’t pay anything!

How do I know if I’ve been missold Loan Insurance / PPI?

The Financial Services Authority (FSA) has published strict rules for the financial services industry which your financial advisor must follow.

To help you further, here are just a few of the reasons why you may have received bad advice.

• You were told you had to have PPI to get the loan
• You were pressured into buying PPI by a pushy sales person
• You were told PPI would improve your chances of securing a loan
• The small print of the contract was not fully explained to you
• The cost of PPI was not fully explained to you
• You were not told that PPI was included in your credit agreement

THE LIST GOES ON……………Claim NOW! Call 0845 475 5435
Accident, Sickness, Unemployment Protection, Redundancy Protection Cover

Accident, sickness, unemployment and redundancy payment cover are similar types of PPI or payment protection insurance sold alongside loans or mortgages.

What will happen if I lose my job or become ill? How will I cover my costs?

Faced with these concerns, taking out accident, sickness and unemployment (ASU) cover or other income protection seems to make perfect sense. This kind of cover typically gives you a monthly tax free income should you be unable to work.

That’s the theory. The reality can be different. As too many people are discovering, these expensive payment protection policies often don’t pay out a penny when the going gets tough. In fact, they invariably add to our financial burdens rather than provide us with a safety net.

The small print in policies documents often contains numerous exclusion clauses. The income protection policies are invalid if, for example, you have a pre-existing medical condition. Stress and back problems are frequently not covered. Recurring conditions are excluded. Self-employed people often have to stop trading completely in order to make a claim.
Loan Payment Protection

Personal Loan Protection (PLP), including secured loan insurance and unsecured loan insurance, is one of the most common forms of payment protection. It’s also one of the most expensive.

This kind of loan payment protection can be sold with just about any loan. Secured loan insurance is tied to an asset, usually your home. Unsecured loan insurance does not require this kind of security.

You might have purchased loan payment protection when you signed up for a loan to buy a kitchen or a car or to consolidate your debts. You could also have purchased it as credit card payment protection when you applied for a credit card. You might not even know you have Personal Loan Protection (PLP) insurance but be paying for it all the same.

This kind of cover can add a staggering amount to the total size of your debt. Moneyfacts data has looked at hundreds of cases and revealed the astonishing cost of loan payment protection. On one loan of £5,000, for example, the payment protection insurance premiums totalled £1,300 – over 20% of the total loan.

So should you have looked more closely at the terms and conditions? Not necessarily. If the costs of PLP were not made clear to you when you took out your loan, you may have a claim for mis-sold loan protection.
Were you Mis-Sold?

These are just a few examples of how your policy may have been mis-sold:

* You were told you had to have PPI to get the loan
* You were pressured into buying PPI by a pushy sales person
* You had medical problems in the past
* You were not told that PPI was included in your financial product
* You were self-employed, unemployed, redundant or retired at the time

Claim Back Payment Protection Insurance (PPI)

Have you been mis-sold your PPI? Chances are you HAVE been. Lenders and banks have been fined thousands of pounds for selling PPI to customers whom they KNEW could never be able to make a claim. You could claim back thousands of pounds plus interest.

Many PPI policies were mis-sold and the person who sold it to you was under pressure to sell it to you no matter what . They were given a commission for selling it to you and the lenders were also paid huge amounts if a PPI policy was sold at the same time as the loan.

Policies were sold to people whom they new could never claim such as self employed people and people with existing medical conditions. Did they care?

Worse still the premiums were often added to the loans and so the customer paid interest on the money also. No wonder lemders and banks have been fined millions in the High Court.

The good news is that you can claim all your premiums back, with interest. And it is a simple process which takes between 3 to 9 months.

If you have your agreement and policy document it will be faster so write to your lender and ask for these NOW!