Payment protection insurance is a rather difficult subject for a lot of people especially as there so much talk about the miss-selling of such plans. First of all what is payment protection insurance? If you have ever had a credit card or store card, you may well have been sold insurance on the back of it which states that if you become unemployed or cannot pay the bills for whatever reason then the insurance will kick in and help you with the repayments for a year.

It seems that the selling of this kind of plan is somewhat illegal and money can be claimed back if you have been sold it in the last six years or so. Large financial organisations like Egg have been made to pay large fines for the miss-selling of these products. Here we would like to provide a guide on PPI claims. First off though PPI claims are not too bad, they do what they say on the tin, however the issue here is how the product has been sold.

The miss-selling is down to banks aggressively lowering staffs pay to sell such products. In some cases many consumers have been told it’s a necessary product or they can’t have the credit they require. This is blatant miss-selling in itself and channels have been setup to combat this and allow consumers to legally claim back £100’s if not £1000’s.

Bear in mind before reading anything further that it may only be possible to reclaim one year’s worth of money. Too start with dig out the terms and conditions that came with your policy or contact the seller for the correct terms and conditions. Make sure you are clear on all the points and think back and make sure you were told about the product you were buying into.

Time to think back to when this was sold to you and whether you were told anything obscure like ‘this is a compulsory product’. This would immediately count as miss-selling. Or did you have any medical problems, self employed, unemployed or retired. Chances are if you were any of these then you’re not eligible for such products anyway. Also if you bought online this may well be very difficult to make a claim as T’s and C’s are always available when purchasing.

So to start ensure you are still eligible for a claim i.e. check your policy documents. If so then in the first instance write to the supplier, chances are they will refuse any claims you have and this has kind of become standard practice for a lot of organisations. Once you have received this refusal, it’s time to send a follow up letter, which should now include a threat to include your financial ombudsman.

At this point you may well have received a settlement letter. If you believe this settlement to be too low then write back and demand what you think is fair. If you still receive plain refusal then lodge a formal complaint to your financial ombudsman which will look into this situation completely free of charge. Currently most PPI Claims cases being dealt with by a financial ombudsman are seeing returns.

Author Bio: Mithul Mistry is writing on behalf of Hamilton Brady, specialists in PPI Claims.

Category: Finances
Keywords: ppi claims