For those who don’t know payment protection insurance (PPI) is something that you used to take out which was designed to cover any loan or credit card repayments if you were unable to work due to accident, sickness or unemployment. However, the miss-selling of PPI has been in the news for years now and it shows no signs of diminishing. Do we understand it correctly however and how does it affect us?
It was declared earlier this year that the Lloyds banking group has set aside an extra £1bn on top of the already staggering £4.3bn that they have already used to compensate customers. The financial Ombudsman Services (FOS) is a committee that is dedicated to dealing with customer’s complaints in the financial sector. In a survey conducted in 2012, it was revealed that the FOS telephone answering service was receiving up to 400 PPI complaints an hour (at their highest crisis point). The compensation varies with each individual case, however the average figures lingers around £2,750 – this is money that could be rightfully yours!
On the other hand, it can clearly be seen that throughout the first six months of 2013 we have seen the number of PPI complaints against Lloyds Banking Group fall by 36% in comparison to the first six months of 2012 – is the saga really declining? Or are banks just getting more efficient at paying people compensation?
Are you eligible?
You are only eligible if you have been miss-sold a policy, that could have been because when you took out a policy you didn’t fully understand it, didn’t want it or didn’t know that you were accepting it. In other words you brought the policy not understanding that it wasn’t actually suitable for you, yet you were sold it anyway. There is a small section of society that is more likely to have been miss-sold PPI than others; these are the unemployed, the retired or students.
How do you know?
If you haven’t received a letter from your bank then this doesn’t mean you haven’t been mis-sold it. It is correct to say that both Lloyds and HSBC have announced that they are both contacting customers explaining that they have potentially been miss-sold PPI.
If you have received a letter in the post then you mustn’t ignore it! Your bank has written to you for a reason and that reason is that they think you may have been miss-sold PPI and this is your chance to get the compensation you deserve. However, if you haven’t received a letter yet, don’t wait for the your bank to contact you, customers will fall through the net and you don’t want to miss out on an opportunity to redeem something you are entitled to – get in contact with your bank today. If you are the sort of person who tends to keep old paper work filed and stored away, go through your previous loans/credit card payments to see if there is any mention of PPI. Be aware as it may not be written as PPI – it may however be described as ‘loan care’ or ‘accidental, sickness, unemployment’ or ‘ASU’ for short.
In order to be successful you should think about making copies of any paperwork you have, as you will need to send these off, including any information of you moving house or changing your name.
There is no deadline to claim, although it tends to be much easier to make a claim from a policy that was active within the last six years. This is because this is the legal required time frame for all banks to have kept information about a credit card or loan you have taken out. This isn’t to say that if your loan was taken out more than six years ago you won’t be able to claim, if you are still paying off your loan/credit card it doesn’t matter when you first took out your policy as it is still active. If you are unsure about whether you have been miss-sold PPI there are plenty of websites online to help you, why not try: http://www.financial-ombudsman.org.uk or get in touch with your bank today!
Business owner, marketing expert and writer Karen James has always been conscious of her business calls and as her businesses have grown she has sought guidance from one of the best telephone answering service; 1stResponse, experts in their field. When Karen is reassured her business calls are taken care of, she likes nothing better than long walks with her dogs or weekends by the sea with her grandchildren.
