When Payment Protection Insurance was introduced by the financial services industry to consumers, it seemed to be such a blessing as it was designed primarily to protect them by covering the monthly repayments of their loans, mortgages, or credit cards in times when they cannot fulfill that obligation due to sickness, accident, redundancy, or even death. However, there have been too many instances where consumers were sold the policy by keeping them in the dark as to what it entails. Some of them were really unaware that they actually paid a hefty sum for it.If you were one of these credit takers who believe were wrongly sold PPI, you can now reclaim the premium amount you paid for, and interest it may have accumulated through time.
What you can do at this point, before you start going to your lender, is to look at your paperwork for any reference of Payment Protection Insurance. Go over your account documents, statements, receipts and the policy certificate that should have been sent out following the sale. Should you have lost any of it, you can request for a copy from your provider. In situations where you forgot who your lender was the credit bureau can help by looking at your credit records. Be reminded though that these institutions are mandated by financial laws to keep your record for only as long as six years, following your account start date or the last repayment on the credit.
After you have gathered the relevant paperwork, write a letter to your creditor or insurance provider telling them that you wish to reclaim your PPI payments. Alternatively, you could get www.ppiclaimsadvice.co to handle the claim for you. State the reason for believing that you were mis-sold the policy. If you need references to establish how you thought you were wrongly sold PPI, you may have a look at the following:
• You were told that PPI was a compulsory insurance.
• The creditor didn’t make it clear to you that it was optional, or explain any cooling off period.
• The creditor implied or stated it would be more expensive without the insurance.
• The creditor implied or insisted that taking out the policy to qualify for the product.
• The creditor was very pushy when selling the product to the point where you felt you couldn’t say no.
• The creditor would not let you continue with the application without agreeing to the PPI policy.
• You were sold cover that you were not eligible for, i.e., unemployment cover when you were already unemployed.
• You were self employed and the policy did not cover self employed people.
• You were not informed that the policy does not cover pre-existing medical conditions (if applicable).
• Your agreement had a pre-ticked box meaning you had to opt out of the service (some pre-July 2007 agreements had these).
When you provider receives and acknowledges your PPI claim letter, they will review the case which could run for up to 6 or 8 weeks. By that time they’ll be coming up with a decision whether to reimburse and/or compensate you for having been mis-sold. If you have not heard from them, or you were unhappy with how they resolved your case, you can take it up to the Financial Ombudsman Services.
As soon as you filed your formal complaint against the provider, the Ombudsman will review it once again for you. They will contact your lender for further enquiries, and you for additional information needed. They will then decide whether to uphold the case or not. The FOS will contact you again, soon enough, if they have reached a decision. If they rule in your favour, your policy premium payment will be returned to you, and most likely the amount accumulated in interests over time.
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