If you are the owner of a credit or store card or you have had one any time in the last six years you could be eligible to reclaim thousands of pounds worth of payment protection insurance (PPI).
Many of the big lenders mis-sold PPI to borrowers and the resulting legal action resulted in huge fines for them plus them having to pay back billions of pounds of mis-sold insurance premiums.
Good news for you and I, but bad news for the banks.
Payment protection insurance is designed to cover your debt (or loan) repayments if you are sick, injured or lose your job for a period of a year. However, it turns out that many people were mis-sold this insurance and bought it when they didn’t want or need it or were sold insurance that they couldn’t claim on when they needed it.
A typical PPI charge was £10 per year for every £100 worth of debt. So £1000 of debt would cost you £100 in PPI, but a debt of £5000 would cost you £500 a year. This soon ads up . A debt of £5000 over five years will cost you a massive £2500 in PPI charges!
You are legally entitled to reclaim your PPI charges if you were the victim of mis-selling. The banks and lenders have been ordered to re-pay this insurance and there are legal ramifications if they do not when there is a valid calim.
You need to check to ensure you meet the criteria for refund, i.e. where you really mis-sold. For example, if you were not told about your PPI payments and it was just added to you account.
Once you have established that you have a valid claim you need to contact your lender to reclaim your PPI premiums. All lenders will have established procedures that you can follow based on the legal guidelines.
You will need to have the terms and conditions of your credit card from the time the PPI paid. If you do not have these you will have to contact your credit card company who will issue them to you. You may be charged £1 for this by some lenders, so send a cheque (not cash) if you want to speed up your claim.
Then you need to write to your lender with all the information to make your claim. There are templates for you to use for the letter, which will help to ensure that you have all information in and help your claim move through the system quickly.
Within eight weeks of you submitting your claim, your lender will contact you with their decision. This is a legally mandated time period and if they are late you are entitled to contact the Financial Ombudsman and make a complaint.
Should your lender rule against you and you disagree with their claim then you can escalate it to the Financial Ombudsman who will review your case. They will then rule on your case and their ruling is final and binding.
If you had payment protection insurance on your credit cards then you may well be eligible to claim it back. The amount you could claim may run in to the thousands, so it is worth checking to see if you are eligible to make a PPI claim.