The banking industry has given up their legal fight over the mis-selling of payment protection insurance (PPI) and will not be appealing the Judicial Review they lost on 20th April 2011. The British Bankers Association (BBA) has stated they do not intend to appeal after losing the court challenge, meaning that the new rules on mis-selling will be implemented accordingly.

This decision is welcomed by the Financial Ombudsman Service whereby last month the High Court ruled that the banks had to comply with the new rules of the Financial Services Authority (FSA), which require them to go back over all their past sales to review where mis-selling has occurred.

Leading high street bank, Barclays, has stated it has set aside £1bn in order to distribute compensation whilst HSBC has put aside £269m. This may now start to see customers trust and confidence in the banks restored in the hope that Banks will start to compensate the estimated several million consumers, fairly and promptly.

PPI policies are supposed to protect and cover consumer credit/loan repayments should they fall ill or lose their job – however these policies have been mis-sold for a number of years meaning that people were paying over the odds for a service they either could not claim on, or were not even entitled to in the first place- due to being self-employed or a student, for example.

In some cases we are learning that borrowers were not even aware that had taken out the PPI policy or they were told they could only receive the loan/credit agreement on the condition that they purchase PPI alongside it.

If you think you may be eligible to claim back your PPI www.realclaims.co.uk will do all the hard work for you whilst you reclaim the money you are legally entitled to.

After several years of investigation by the Office of Fair Trading, Competition Commission and the FSA, the regulator announced in August a firm crackdown on the way banks have been dealing with complaints about mis-sold PPI policies.

It stipulated, among other things, that banks and other lenders will have to review old complaints about the mis-selling of PPI and has announced new rules that will come into effect on December 1st.

The new rules could mean that more than 2.5 million people being refunded as much as £2.7bn in total.

The British Bankers Association have disagreed with this ruling saying it could open a can of worms because the new rules could set a precedent, and then be applied to the sale of other products.

The FSA is contesting the British Bankers Association for judicial review.

In the last 5 years there have been more than a million complains and the FSA has claimed that loan firms were turning down half of them with some turning down nearly all claims.

About 30% of the rejections were turned to the Financial Ombudsman Service (FOS) for help, where about 80% of the complaints were then upheld.

We have seen so many companies in recent months spring up in the business of PPI promising to reclaim miss sold payment protection insurance policies. 

Having been involved in this industry for many years we always find it of great interest to understand the problems associated with over selling these services, giving customers unrealistic and impossible expectations.

Many clients tell us that some companies will, without a contract or policy number be able to miraculously claim back the miss sold payment protection premium for the customer for only a small fee.  It always amazes me that clients believe this to be true and have parted with hard earned cash in the belief that this could happen only to find out months down the line that no advances have been made.

If you are sure you have payment protection insurance or a PPP policy, loan protect or any other acronym meaning the same thing you can request your agreement yourself.   In most cases if you ring the lender you can usually get the information providing you jump through all the security hoops, such as Date of birth etc.  The lender will almost certainly provide a copy of the agreement providing you give a valid reason, ie accountant requires the information, your applying for working families tax etc.

If you have your agreement number but have lost your loan contract you can request under Section 77/78 of the Consumer Credit Act 1974 which provides you with access rights to a copy of the  agreement and all other documents referred to within the agreement. 

It is the lenders duty to provide you with a copy of the agreement, as signed by both parties and other documents.  If this is the case contact realclaims today and request a copy of the letter to send on to your lender we will only be too happy to assist.

185,000 previously rejected complaints against mis-sold payment protection insurance (PPI) are to be re-opened under new guidance from the City Watchdog.

The FSA will ask sellers of PPI to write to all holders of policies bought since 2007 in order to give them a chance to complain and potentially have their money refunded.

The reason behind this is to try and alleviate some of the pressure the Financial Ombudsman Service has faced recently with the unprecedented level of complaints they have received from the public after loan firms have rejected their complaints.

Firms representing more than 40% of face-to-face sales in the Single Premium Unsecured Personal Loan PPI market have agreed to review these sales and redress those consumers identified as mis-sold.

Single premium PPI has been the most notorious sort of PPI and the sale of it was banned earlier this year.

The FSA has currently taken action against 22 firms over poor PPI sales practices with Alliance & Leicester receiving the largest fine of £7m in October 2008 for serious failings in its telephone PPI sales.

Whenever a lender enters into an arrangement with a borrower they have an obligation to offer best advice to their client. This is a duty of care or fiduciary duty. It dictates that the lender must act in the best interest of the client and be open and transparent in all dealings with the client or on the clients’ behalf.

The sale of single or block premium PPI breaches that duty of care over and over and over and is always disadvantageous to the client:

• Block premiums can add up to 55% to the total loan and cost the borrower thousands.
• Block premiums cannot be altered to suit the needs of the client nor can they be cancelled.
• Block premiums attract interest at the same rate of the loan wildly increasing their true cost.
• Block premiums are vastly overpriced sometimes 20 times over.
• Block premiums vastly increase the cost of the loan and adversely affect the credit score of the borrower or reduce available equity and prejudice the ability to refinance or borrow extra funds.
• Block premiums run for a maximum of 60 months and can leave the borrower without cover for loans which exceed 5 years.
• Block premiums are almost never rebated if the borrower redeems the loan early and have to be settled in full.
• Block premiums earn huge commissions of 50-80% for the lender which, by law, should be declared to the borrower. Failure to declare these premiums is a specific type of financial fraud.

There are many more breaches which we could cover but ANY of the above are enough to ensure victory in a PPI claim. Not only have the lenders ignored their obligations to the client but they have ridden roughshod over the rules and regulations from their regulatory and supervisory agencies.

These are the real issues and problems with PPI and these are the issues we pursue through the courts if necessary. This ensures an almost total success rate in our claims process.

‘Misselling’ is not the basis of a case but merely reinforces the serious misdemeanours of the lenders.

Our legal process identifies many more issues than a claims management company and will offer the maximum payout for each client with no deductions from their settlement.

Many competing companies pursue the recovery of PPI premiums for ‘misselling’. This is a broad term which identifies customers who have been wrongfully sold the insurance and will never be able to claim.

There are a few broad categories for misselling.

Medically Exempt. All those with pre-existing conditions will find it nearly impossible to claim. Anyone with a history of heart complaints, high blood pressure, asthma, diabetes, high cholesterol, back complaints or even migraine may have their claim refused.

Income Exempt. All those with irregular, insubstantial or variable sources of income will also see their claims rejected. These include students, contract workers, the self-employed, housewives, retired, company directors and part-time workers.

Existing Cover Exempt. Anyone who receives full sick pay when they are absent from work will see their claim refused. These include all public sector workers, nurses, doctors, policemen and women, those in the armed services, government or local authority employees. It also includes anyone who has alternative accident, sickness and redundancy cover either through their job or through an existing policy.

It also includes those clients who have been not been given all the facts or given misleading information to coerce or force them in to purchasing a policy.

This would cover all those who had been told they could not take out a loan without taking PPI; those who had not even been told they had taken PPI; those who had not been informed that they would pay interest on the PPI; those who had not been informed that the PPI cover only lasted for 60 months; those who were never told that they could purchase cheaper cover elsewhere.

It is true that PPI can be recovered purely from a misselling angle. These claims however are normally performed by claims management companies. They have no legal process and there are varying success rates.

They also offer the worst value for the client. They claim back the amount of the policy, the refund of all payments toward the policy and statutory interest on those amounts. They then take anything from 25-40% of the settlement as their ‘fee’.

We offer the best option for the client. As we pursue our claims through full legal process, we can put several extra factors into the claim which will add several thousand pounds to each settlement and give all of the money back to the client.

There are two types of PPI policy offered.

Monthly premiums. These policies are separate from the loan, paid on a monthly basis and paid by a separate direct debit. These policies can be cancelled, increased or decreased at any time to reflect the personal circumstances of the borrower and there is no interest added to the monthly payment. Although slightly overpriced when offered by the lender, these policies are not worth challenging as the refunds will be minimal.

Single premiums. This is where the PPI premiums for 36 or 60 months are calculated and added to the main loan. The payment is also incorporated in the payment of the main loan. The policy cannot be altered or cancelled as it now forms part of the loan. Clients also pay interest on the PPI at the same rate as the main loan form the outset.

This is the injustice we can challenge and recover money for the client. Because the premiums are so overpriced the return to the client runs into many thousands of pounds.

Call us today on 0845 867 65 44 to speak to one of our representatives about reclaiming PPI go to our PPI page for more information.

PPI (payment protection insurance) has been pushed mercilessly alongside loans for the past 15 years. The lenders nearly always make more from the sale of PPI than from the loan itself.

As an example, in 2002 Barclays Bank sold £360 million of PPI alongside loans. Their profit from that was over £280 million. They are not alone. ALL lenders have saddled their customers with this insurance to produce bumper profits.

Thankfully the sale of these policies was banned in May 2009. Relentless pressure from consumer groups, the Citizens Advice Bureau, television gurus and mainstream media has forced both the FSA and the government to ban the practice.

This now means that anyone with one of these policies is entitled to reclaim their money in full with interest and compensation added in.

We offer the only ethical, FREE service in the country, for the recovery of this money with no upfront charges and no reductions from the money awarded to the client. By following full legal process our solicitors can levy full costs against the lender.

There are an estimated 20 million PPI policies in force. We can also recover premiums going back over 6 years. This puts another 80 million policies up for challenge.

Our common aim must be to reach as many of the people who hold these policies as quickly as possible. Before the lenders look to change legislation which will cheat millions out of the money they are due.

Alistair Darling has proposed tougher new reforms to the financial system specifically targeting UK banks. Stricter regulations will be introduced with a view to giving the customer much greater consumer protection.

In a statement to the House of Commons, Alistair Darling said the financial system needed to ensure robust regulation, and banks and financial institutions should be better managed.

Some of the key proposals included:

• More help for consumers – a national money advice line funded by the banks and a strengthened deposit protection scheme
• Greater competition – the FSA and Office of Fair Trading to ensure that new players can enter the banking market
• Tougher banking regulation – banks required to hold more capital to cover any future losses and more powers for regulators to take over failing banks
• Executive pay – the FSA to report yearly on whether banks have met the new code of conduct on remuneration, and bank boards to be strengthened

The consumers association Which? hailed measures to increase protection for bank customers.

"We’re pleased that the government recognises the need to provide a better deal for consumers," said Which? chief executive Peter Vicary-Smith.

"Warnings about risky products, universally available money guidance and more choice on the High Street will all help to empower consumers in their dealings with the financial world."

This news comes at a time where more and more consumers are becoming aware of the fact they may have been mis-sold a financial product.

Stricter controls over banks should mean an end to issues such as the mis-selling of PPI, consumer credit agreements, whole of life insurance and unfair bank charges etc. 

BBC Business News

Payment Protection insurance (PPI) is often mis-sold as a result of greedy financial services looking to make an easy and tidy profit. PPI is usually sold by financial institutions such as banks, money lenders, car finance companies, Credit Card companies and the like. PPI has been a profitable business for some time now and only in the last few years have the financial authorities really made any major changes to help protect the consumer.

PPI can cost the customer as much (or even more) as the interest paid back over the period of the loan or credit agreement, so it’s not hard to see why PPI is so often given the hard sell. The problem which comes with this method of selling is that the sale is often rushed through or little time for discussion is given to the full details of what PPI really covers or entails.

In most circumstances a customer never gets to find out if the policy sold to them was in fact suitable for their needs or mis-sold as they do not have the misfortune of finding themselves in a situation where a claim is needed to be made. A dreadful time to discover that a policy was mis-sold is when a customer finds they really need to make a claim, so often policies are taken out in order to protect against unemployment or other positions where financial difficulty may occur and finding out you’ve been paying into an expensive scheme which will not deliver because you do not meet certain criteria can be devastating.

Common sense would denote that certain questions should have been asked before a policy was undertaken or that a detailed copy of the terms and conditions be issued to the customer, but in so many situations this was found not to be the case at all.

Millions of people have purchased PPI under the mistaken belief that it was compulsory or that it would improve their chances of acquiring credit approval. This is just one of the reasons why massive fines have been imposed and changes in policy have been made over the last few years. Changes are still being made to the system and only today it was announced by The Financial Services Authority (FSA) that much larger fines will be imposed in the future if companies are still found to be mis-selling PPI. Individual traders can also be financially penalised under the new rules.

PPI is no longer allowed to be sold at the same time as the selling of loans or credit agreements, this indicates that the FSA recognised how severe the problem of mis-selling of PPI really was and under which conditions it was most commonly occurring.