PPI - A product with many names!

There are many factors that come in to play when a customer is looking to make a compensation claim. One confusing factor is the fact that payment protection insurance (PPI) is a generic name – in other words, banks and lenders called their PPI policies by different names.

With this is mind, we decided to re-cap on PPI and the whole sorry scandal…

What is PPI?

PPI is Payment Protection Insurance, the name given to an optional financial product PPI Scotland customers could add on – for a monthly premium payment – to their loan, mortgage, credit card or other credit accounts.

The overall aim of the PPI policy was for it to make the repayments on the account in the event of loss of income.

BUT, there was a problem…

Not all customers were aware they had the policy and so were unable to make an informed choice.

Whilst it is a good idea to insure your income, many PPI policies didn’t cover people who were self-employed or retired.

For many customers, they were paying also paying a lot of money for a policy that was of very little practical value to them - statistics show that PPI policies paid out on an average of 15% of claims, an incredibly low pay out rate. Compare it to car insurance, for example, which pays out in 80% of claims made.

There was an investigation into how these PPI policies were sold and what became apparent very quickly, was that the selling of PPI was grossly unfair. As a result, you are now able to claim back premiums pays, interest and in some cases, fees and so on that were also applied to the account.

A product with many names

PPI is a product of many names, making it hard to tell in some cases if you have PPI or some form of it on your credit card, loan or mortgage account. Here are just a few;

• Repayment Protection Insurance (RPI)
• Accident, Sickness and Unemployment Cover (ASU)
• Card Care
• Finance Care
• Mortgage Protection Insurance (MPI) – although this is rarer

What you need to do

The task at hand is quite simple – you need to check all your paperwork and look for a policy that says it will, if you are unable to do so due to loss of income, make the repayments on your behalf.

This a PPI type policy and the likelihood is that you could have a genuine and eligible claim for compensation.

Interested in claiming back thousands of pounds? Call Payment Protection Scotland.

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