subject: How Much PPI Can You Claim Back? [print this page] How Much PPI Can You Claim Back? How Much PPI Can You Claim Back?
PPI or Payment Protection Insurance can be a very expensive policy which ends up costing more than the interest on the loan itself. Some estimates calculate Payment Protection Insurance can increase the cost of a loan by over 50%. Luckily, those who have been miss-sold payment protection insurance can claim back the premiums they have paid over the last six years.
The majority of people who take out a mortgage, credit card or loan will be offered Payment Protection Insurance. A large number of these same people may have been paying Payment Protection Insurance (PPI) for years without realising it. PPI was often given different names, or not mentioned at all and included as part of the loan package without informing the customer, who was just given a monthly repayment figure, PPI included.
Payment protection insurance has been given many names: Loan insurance, mortgage payment protection insurance, accident sick and unemployment etc. They all have the same component - PPI - which is supposed to protect clients in the event of an accident, sickness or disability.
Fast forward to a time when a customer needs to make a claim and they find that despite paying those expensive premiums all those years, they are not eligible for an insurance payout. The problem is that claimants often have to meet very strict conditions to quality for any payouts and many claims are rejected.
Regulations are much stricter now since financial institutions received so much negative publicity regarding PPI and some even had to pay huge fines for miss-selling policies. But there are many people who took out their policy years ago, before the new regulations came into force.
There are many techniques used by sales people to close the deal, some of which are considered unethical. These same tactics have seen banks pay large penalties for failing to inform their PPI customers of all their options.
Do any of the following apply to you?
- You were pressured into taking out PPI to qualify for a loan
- The terms and conditions were not clearly explained to you when you took out the policy.
- You are self-employed.
- You are unemployed.
- You had a pre-existing condition when you took out the policy which disqualified you from being able to make a claim.
If the answer is yes, there is a good chance that you can claim back your premiums for the last six years. The exact amount will depend on the type of policy you took out, how long you have been paying it and under what conditions you were sold the policy. Based on average loan amounts however, it is safe to say that many people will be eligible for thousands of pounds in refunds.
If you find that you are not having any success dealing the financial institution directly regarding your claim you can always contact the Financial Ombudsman for help and they can tell you the best way to proceed.
Find out how much PPI you can claim back - it could be thousands.
