Which is a great website full of helpful tips and advice for consumers.
They have a PPI (Payment Protection Insurance) section where you can claim back PPI yourself quite easily if you have the time and can write a good letter.
PPI was a very poor deal which made huge profits for lenders and insurers.
If you are not sure if you were mis-sold ppi take a look at the checklist here.
There is no need to use a claims management company if you don’t want to. Just follow the Which Guide and use the Which Template Letters they supply on their website.
Which PPI Mis-selling Checklist
Mis-selling checklist
If you can answer ‘no’ to one or more of these questions, then you may have been mis-sold PPI.
- If the insurance was optional, was that made clear to you?
- Did the adviser tell you about any significant exclusions under the policy – for example, the exclusion that says you won’t be covered for any pre-existing medical condition?
- If you took out a loan or finance agreement, did the adviser make it clear that you would have to pay for the insurance up front in one single payment?
- If you had to pay for the PPI as a single payment, did the adviser make it clear that the insurance cost would be added to the loan and you would be paying interest on it?
- Single premium PPI insurance normally only lasts for five years. If your loan or finance agreement was for longer than this, did the adviser make it clear that the insurance would run out before you had finished paying for your loan or finance agreement? The adviser should also have told you that you would continue to pay interest on the insurance premium, even after the insurance expired.
- If you bought PPI after 14 January 2005 did the adviser try to persuade you to take it out by saying something like ‘we strongly recommend that you consider taking out PPI’. If so, the sale counts as an ‘advised’ sale and they should have issued a ‘demands and needs statement’ to show why a particular policy has been recommended and why it is suitable for you. If they didn’t, this is grounds for complaint.
What to do next.
If you answered ‘no’ to any of the questions in the checklist you should make a formal complaint as you may be entitled to compensation. Use the Which PPI re-claim tool to get redress.
If you didn’t answer ‘no’ to any of the questions you probably weren’t mis-sold, but you might still want to cancel your PPI in favour of better protection.
PPI Alternatives To Keep You Protected
WHICH Guide To Income protection- How IP works
Income protection will cover you if you are unable to work due to accident or illness
Millions of us have policies like critical illness, private medical insurance and payment protection, sold to us over the years by salespeople who convinced us we needed protecting. However, whilst they were right about the protection, they were wrong about the policies.
The one protection policy every working adult in the UK does need is the very one most of us don’t have – income protection (IP).
What is IP?
IP is an insurance policy which provides you with a regular tax-free income if you can’t work because of illness or disability. The benefit paid is up to a maximum percentage of your earnings – often 50% or 60%.
Policies pay out after you have been off work for a period of time known as the ‘deferred period’, and will continue to pay out until you can get back to work or until the end of the policy term – usually retirement.
You can choose a deferred period of four, 13, 26 or 52 weeks, depending on how long you may be able to survive on any savings or how long you receive sick pay from your employer.
The longer the deferred period, the lower the cost – for example, with some policies a four week period would cost more than twice as much a month than a 26 week deferred period.
Do I really need it?
Ask yourself the following questions. If your answer is no to all three, then you need some form of IP:
Will your employer continue to pay you a percentage of your salary indefinitely if you are off sick?
If not, and you are part of a couple, could you pay all the bills and live on your partner’s income indefinitely?
If not (or you are single) do you have savings you could live off indefinitely?
Remember: Illness, accident or disability can happen to anyone. Currently 2.2 million people of working age will be off work for at least six months because of sickness and disability, and more than 2.6 million people are claiming incapacity benefit.
What Happened To PPI Providers – PPI Judicial Review
Judicial review – Source ‘Which’
Which? published an advert in The Times on 5 May calling on members of the British Bankers’ Association to admit defeat over the PPI judicial review. They did so on 9 May.
Between 25-28 January 2011, the British Banker’s Association (BBA) went to court with the Financial Services Authority (FSA) and Financial Ombudsman (FOS) over the mis-selling of PPI policies.
On 20 April 2011 a high court judge ruled that the BBA lost their case over complaint handling rules on Payment Protection Insurance (PPI).
On 9 May 2011 the British Bankers’ Association announced that it would no longer appeal the ruling of the high court, meaning that the banks must continue to compensate consumers if they were mis-sold PPI.
Judicial Review – a win for consumers
Which? is delighted with this outcome. Which? chief executive Peter Vicary-Smith said:
‘We’re delighted that the BBA has at last seen sense. Hopefully this will be a watershed moment in how banks treat their customers.
We’re calling on members of the BBA to respond to the complaints they may have had on hold as a matter of urgency.
No excuses to delay compensation
There are now no excuses to delay compensating those who were mis-sold this insurance product and we’d encourage anyone yet to complain to get their complaint in to whoever sold them the product and to take their complaint to FOS if the are unhappy with the response.
We hope this outcome sends a clear signal to the banks that they must move on from PPI, cannot get away with poor complaints handling, and must pay up to the roughly two million consumers who have been mis-sold.
