Whenever you borrow money from a financial institution in the form of credit cards, loan, car financing or mortgage, you are sometimes asked if you’ve got any policy in place to help you keep up with the repayments if in case you lost your source of income because you got sick for a priod of time, had an accident, or were made redundant at work. The banks deem it necessary to protect your account from getting in arrears and their offices from potential loss.
The introduction of Payment Protection Insurance might have been a clever and ideal move for the industry until mischievous schemes were devised to sell these policies. Its designed purpose was defeated by the mis-selling scandal that took place several years ago and still has gone on.
How could any consumer, including you, be tricked into buying Payment Protection Insurance?
You were self-employed, unemployed or retired when you took out PPI
You were sold PPI even though you had a pre-existing medical condition
You thought PPI was compulsory or were advised to buy it
You were sold insurance that didn’t suit your circumstances
You didn’t even know you had PPI
If you suspect that any of what is mentioned above happened to you, you stand the chance of getting your PPI payments back and save yourself from being on the brink of a financial crunch. The total premium amount you paid and the interest accrued can be returned to you or have it cover the outstanding balance you still owe the bank.
For whatever reason that the PPI policy was mis-sold to you, the bank should make a thorough review of your credit account. It could be one of those situations or there may still be other reasons you believe that you were wrongly signed up to Payment Protection Insurance.
At this point, you need to put your claim in writing and have the bank do the investigation. You also need to attach proof that you have been paying for the policy for a while now. Submit copies of your statements, agreement forms, and policy certificate for the bank to refer to.
PPI claims are usually reviewed and decided on for 8 weeks at the longest given that there are no complicated situations that surround the case. Evidence must also be sufficient to ensure a seamless review.
You also need to gather as much paperwork as you can and attach it to your PPI claim. It will serve as evidence and the bank will have to refer to it when weighing how valid your claim is. They’ll also cross-check it with the information they have in their database. Remember that the burden of proving your case depends on the evidence your bank gathers so be sure that you attach what you believe is necessary.
When the review has been completed, the bank will have to inform you of their decision soon after. There’s no excuse to them failing to communicate with you, irrespective of a favourable result or otherwise. If they did not contact you about the results of thir review, you can contact them to demand an explanation. If the resolution was against how obvious the mis-selling was based on the evidence, file a complaint against them at the Financial Ombudsman Service. The FOS will review the case more thoroughly and look into the decisions made by the bank.
If you’re looking to claim your PPI payments and are in doubt of how the process goes, this information will help you through it. You may also choose to hire the services of PPI claims advisers to do the work on your behalf for a fee.
And while this process will take weeks to be resolved, you can rest assured that everything will be investigated and resolved accordingly. It’s not a walk in the park but going through reclaiming your mis-sold PPI should be worth it.