Mis-sold PPI: Steps for making a claim
The first step you should take when reclaiming your Payment
Protection Insurance (PPI) is to find out if you have a PPI policy
combined with your loan, mortgage, finance agreement or credit
card. One of the easiest ways to discover if you have a PPI policy
is by checking your credit agreement and any other paperwork which
you were given at the time you purchased the product. On several
occasions insurance companies have been known to rename PPI, such
as "Credit Protection Cover", in an attempt to distance themselves
from the PPI mis-selling scandal. If you are unable to find the
credit agreement, yoo should check your credit account statements
for any unexpected charges or deductions could be a PPI
premium.
Once you have established that you have a PPI policy, the next
step is to consider if you have any grounds for making a claim for
mis-selling. The Financial Services Authority (FSA) rules on this
issue are can be quite complicated; they do require all companies
that sell PPI to act in the best interests of their customers. They
need to be one and honest when recommending any kind of insurance
product which will suit their customers needs.
To make a successful claim for mis-selling you will need to show
the type of unfair conduct used by the PPI salesman that caused you
to buy a PPI policy that was in breach of the FSA's rules. This
could range from the salesman telling you that you would be not be
approved for credit unless you purchased a PPI policy alongside the
financial product; to the salesman failing to inform you about key
policy restrictions which made the policy unsuitable for you.
Once you have determined that you have a PPI policy and that it
was mis-sold toy you, the next course of action is to make a formal
complaint to the financial company that sold you the PPI. This
should be done in writing and you should quote the date that the
policy was sold to you, the reference or account numbers, the name
of the salesperson (if possible), and the debt which the policy
covered. You explain your reasons why you believe that the policy
was mis-sold, and make it clear that you believe they breached the
FSA rules on the conduct of insurance sales. The financial company
is legally required to provide you with a written response to your
complaint, and if it rejects your complaint or fails to respond
within 8 weeks then you can take further action.
Fortunately for consumers, complaints about the mis-selling of
financial products do not have to be dealt with via the County
Court, which can be a time consuming and expensive process.
Instead, consumers have the opportunity to refer the matter to the
Financial Ombudsman Service. This is an independent adjudicator set
up by the government to deal with consumer complaints about
breaches of FSA regulations by financial businesses. The Financial
Ombudsman Service is free to use, and its decisions are legally
binding on financial businesses. They will conduct a full
investigation and if they decide that you were mis-sold PPI, it
will order the business to pay you a full refund.
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