SIPP Scandal: The New Wave of Payment Protection Insurance

June 18, 2018
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Self-Invested Personal Pensions or SIPP owners might find themselves making a claim for mis-sold pension investments in the next few years.

Claims management expert Rob Ridge from Money Redress stated Britons are unaware about the scandal surrounding SIPPs. He speculates it may deal further damage than mis-sold PPI as those mis-sold investments can receive a maximum of £50,000-£150,000 for every recompense.

Ridge speculates the SIPP scandal will reach heights above £10 billion, which is 25% of the £40 billion payout for payment protection insurance.

The mis-selling storyline happens as so: Financial advisers out to scam savers will promise them massive 20 per cent returns on their pensions reinvestment incrementing each year. The get-rich-quick scheme involves seemingly feasible investments such as airport parking spaces, holiday properties, and green energy projects.

While the saver receives an increment to their pensions, it is not as high as their initial investment. The agreement will never guarantee returns by the promised deadline.

Experts and observers found the SIPPs circumstances similar to the initial discovery of payment protection insurance mis-selling. Ridge believes the impact of the new scandal to the newly-recovering financial services industry is unprecedented.

PPI claiming is set to end on 29 August 2019. With the new scandal looming on the horizon, it is possible the industry’s consumer confidence rating will once again be at an all time low.

Who Refunds Your PPI Claims?

June 12, 2018
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The banks will refund your successful PPI complaint. Because of their bank employees’ unscrupulous sales tactics, banks now take the stage in refunding consumers their rightful refund and compensation for an insurance policy they cannot hope to use due to their ineligibility.

You are mis-sold PPI if you were already sick, injured, unemployed, or self-employed during the time a bank employee or financial adviser sold the policy to you. In addition, if your financial adviser did not disclose substantial commissions (above 50% of the insurance policy’s sale value) from your policy, consider it mis-sold under the Plevin clause.

What Do You Need for a Successful Claim?

To prove your sickness, injury, or lack of employment or self-employment, you will need documents to serve as evidence.

For sicknesses or injuries, a medical certificate from your attending physician during your treatment will indicate that before the PPI’s sale, you were already suffering a malady that renders you ineligible for the policy’s benefits.

For unemployment or self employment, your last payslip or business permit are enough to validate that previous to buying the policy you were unemployed or running your own business.

What To Do In Case Banks Reject Your Claim?

Banks will do anything in its power to avoid refunding you at any point. However, the Financial Ombudsman Service will investigate in-depth to help you reclaim all your refunds. The FOS’ decision is final. If its judgement was not in your favour, then you will need to settle with the bank’s decision.

Three Difficulties You Can Prevent When Claiming Mis-Sold PPI Refunds

June 4, 2018
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The FCA’s 29 August 2019 deadline is coming closer. Before you lose your chance to claim your refunds, it is vital to make a claim as soon as you possibly can. Unfortunately, that means having to file your complaint alongside hundreds of thousands just about to do the same. Here are three common PPI claim difficulties and the solutions you can take to ease the process.

Proving You Were Mis-Sold

Bank employees used unscrupulous tactics to sell PPI to ineligible customers. If you have documentation that proves you were unemployed/self-employed, injured, or suffering a medical condition during the time you took out your financing with PPI, you can easily prove you were mis-sold the policy.

Banks Only Keep Six Years of Transaction Records

Banks will try to keep customers off their back by citing they only keep six years worth of transaction records for any financing including mortgages. However, a credit score review allows you to see the entire transaction performance beyond six years for any financing you took out including all the PPI repayments you’ve made.

Going to the Financial Ombudsman for Re-Processing

The FOS will give the final verdict for any mis-sold PPI conflict but takes plenty of time from customers having to do a second round of making claims. By contacting a PPI claims company, they can save time and allow themselves their full refund and compensation.

 

Avoiding the Peril of a Mis-Sold PPI Product in Three Ways

May 30, 2018
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Payment protection insurance is a financial product that functions perfectly. However, due to the manner it was mis-sold, consumers could not make a claim for their benefits. As a result, millions of UK consumers purchased an insurance policy they did not need.

To avoid purchasing similar products in the future, it would be best to take note of these three things.

Read the Terms and Conditions

The fine print indicates consumer or insurance beneficiary requirements. Therefore, for any financial product, it is wise to spend time understanding this area before signing the contract. Bank employees rushed most mis-sold customers to prevent them from reading the fine print. Ask your employee to give you the terms to make sure you’re not purchasing something you cannot use in the future.

Institutions Cannot Require the Purchase of Brand-Specific Items

Banks can require consumers to purchase payment protection products and other items that can help secure any financing. However, they cannot require borrowers to purchase a specific brand of insurance policy or financial product. That product is automatically mis-sold because no single insurance policy can address a consumer’s need.

Alternatives to Loan Security

If there is a way to secure your loan through your home’s equity or property collateral, then these are better alternatives than taking out a payment protection insurance policy. Your contract with the bank ensures you will get the loan without any mis-sold product, and if you repay it on time and in full, you won’t have to deal with repossession and losses.

 

Three Types of PPI Variants You Need to Know

May 23, 2018
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Payment protection insurance (PPI) is not the actual name banks sold these products to consumers. “Payment” is a general term for any amount borrowers pay regularly for any loan, mortgage, or credit card. Banks may name these products differently. If you don’t know these names, you might be missing out on thousands in refunds. Read more about them below.

Loan Repayment Insurance

Borrowers who take out general-purpose or personal loans often receive offers for loan repayment insurance. These guarantee the basic PPI coverage: a one-year repayment scheme in case the borrower gets sick, encounters an accident, or gets unemployed. If they were already sick, injured, or unemployed during the time they purchased the policy, they must consider it invalid and mis-sold.

Mortgage Protection Insurance

Mortgage protection insurance policies can pay from one to five years of repayments for borrowers who are sick, injured, or encountered an accident. Lenders make these available to consumers about to take on multiple decades of mortgage amounts. The greater the years of coverage, the higher the repayments borrowers must make. It is invalid in case it was sold to consumers already sick, injured, or unemployed.

Credit Card Protection Insurance

Credit card protection insurance covers only one year of repayments for consumers who get sick, injured, or become unemployed. Similar to loan repayment insurance, consumers with an existing sickness, injury, or were unemployed or self-employed during the time of purchase must consider their policies mis-sold.

Clydesdale and Yorkshire Allocate £350m More For Mis-Sold PPI

May 14, 2018
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Clydesdale and Yorkshire Banking Group (CYBG) saw its PPI figures increase to about 59,000 in the first half of the year. The National Australia Bank (NAB)-backed financial group is struggling to cope with its PPI repayments and has lost shares in the market.

Stock figures show the Glasgow financial institution losing about 6% of its shares after it told investors it needs to deal with “legacy PPI costs.” The huge £350m addition would mean a huge dent on its profit.

CYBG said its PPI figures increased after “heightened media coverage, the FCA advertising campaign, and increased claims management company activities.”

The bank acknowledged its PPI pool to increase in the coming years until 2019, the appointed date of the FCA’s claims deadline.

NAB will deal with £148m, but CYBG still takes a £202m pre-tax charge hit on its profits for the first half of 2018. Bank analysts claim NAB’s insufficient provisions is a “bit of a disaster” for the Glasgow-based financial institution.

PPI is the UK’s biggest financial scandal with almost every UK bank selling insurance policies to ineligible consumers. It has since reached the biggest refund pot of £40 million.

Recently, St John Building’s commercial barristers claim the FCA’s processes limit the actual figure Plevin claimants receive. Instead of the 100% PPI refund, the Watchdog’s procedures allow banks to pay as much as 20% only to PPI mis-selling victims.

PPI Claimants’ Refunds Might Be Lower Than Estimated According to Barristers

May 11, 2018
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According to commercial barristers, the Financial Conduct Authority’s guidelines have lowered the value of consumer’s collective PPI claims by £18 billion.

St John Buildings’ barristers believe that the Plevin case is not paying the full refund of afflicted consumers. The amount repaid at most is only 20% of the original PPI price.

According to barrister Elis Gomer, consumers who question the FCA’s accountability for citizens are rightful to do so. The UK public is at a loss with the underpayments made with the grace of the City watchdog.

The FCA and the UK Supreme Court had considered Plevin a landmark case. However, the case’s overall influence in the process is not clear. While consumers are satisfied to have received refunds from Plevin-qualified cases, some savvy claimants have forwarded their refunds to be incomplete. Gomer said most of these cases were settled with higher refunds behind closed doors.

The UK’s total PPI bill is at £40 billion. If the FCA’s oversight is amended, the bill could reach £50-£55 billion, making it the single biggest financial fraud case in the history of the country.

The FCA has appointed 29 August 2019 as the PPI claims’ deadline. It has used an advertising campaign to spur customers to make complaints, an act it considers a success provided the PPI claims’ increase in the first half of 2018.

PPI Claims: The Story So Far

April 29, 2018
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Payment protection insurance, designed to repay loans, mortgages, and credit cards for one year when a borrower gets sick or becomes unable to pay, has become the biggest taboo word in the last decade. With over half the UK’s population mis-sold through unscrupulous lender’s tactics, the scandal has reached up to £40 billion since 2009, the year consumer groups and the Financial Services Authority (now Financial Conduct Authority) had made the scandal public knowledge.

The FCA has declared August 29, 2019 as the last day to reclaim refunds from banks in March 2017. Despite the protests of consumer groups and a failed lawsuit a claims management company pursued, the deadline is pushing through.

Supplementing the PPI scandal’s impending end is an FCA and bank-sponsored public service advertising campaign featuring the voice and disembodied head of Arnold Schwarzenegger telling UK consumers and citizens in different situations to make a claim and “do it now.”

The advertising campaign has been relatively successful. The commercial had garnered 40% more complaints in the first year of its airing. However, consumer advisor and financial expert Martin Lewis claims the City watchdog’s commercial may be misleading.

Its call-to-action asking consumers to search Google for “FCA PPI” may trigger search engine algorithms that display claims management company advertising links at the top results. Consumers may be misled to think that to claim PPI refunds they would have to pay, which isn’t the case.

PPI Complaints Doubled in Half a Year After FCA’s Ads

April 27, 2018
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The notorious payment protection insurance with a deadline for claims on August 29, 2019 has gained traction among claimants after the ongoing yet successful FCA advertising campaign had urged consumers to make a claim for their mis-sold insurance policies.

The bizarre yet meaningful advertisement starring the voice and animatronic head of Hollywood legend Arnold Schwarzenegger has urged consumers to “do it now” and make a PPI claim to obtain their refunds. The advertisement calls for consumers to search for “FCA PPI,” which will then lead them to the City watchdog’s dedicated page for PPI mis-selling.

Complaint figures have reached about 2.21 million, 13,000 fewer compared to 2017’s first half, but nonetheless a huge improvement that will only increase as the PPI deadline approaches.

Meanwhile, MoneySavingExpert founder Martin Lewis believes the FCA’s advertisements are troublesome than they are helpful. He said asking for consumers to search particular keywords that claims management companies can hijack for advertisements will mislead consumers to CMC landing pages where they are led to believe reclaiming refunds requires payment.

In his algorithm test regarding the FCA’s instruction, he revealed that two of the top-tier results of the initial page using the key phrase mentioned had revealed two CMCs who had funded the advertising for the keywords.

Martin Lewis: UK PPI Adverts Are Misleading

April 18, 2018
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The Financial Conduct Authority’s PPI claims commercial featuring the animatronic head on tank treads and the voice of Hollywood Star Arnold Schwarzenegger has seen great success. However, MoneySavingExpert founder Martin Lewis said the advertisements are misleading. He believes the advice provided can trap consumers into paying for their PPI claims.

The commercials featured Schwarzenegger’s disembodied head walking on tank treads telling consumers and bus passengers to “do it now” and make a claim for their mis-sold insurance policies. However, it commands consumers to search Google for “FCA PPI” instead of providing an actual URL directly to the FCA’s PPI page.

Lewis said search engine algorithms will use this keyword to display primary advertisements from claims companies who would charge a substantial fee if they can make your complaint gain success and refunds. In search engines, organic unsponsored results often appear below one or two company advertisements related to a particular keyword.

PPI is the biggest UK financial scandal in history. It has gained the bank industry over £40 billion in refunds and penalties. About £25 billion had been returned to consumers. The FCA has made its decision in March 2017 to impose a PPI claims deadline by August 29, 2019. All complaints performed after this date will not receive any support from the regulator.