Can I claim Payment Protection Insurance (PPI) compensation?
Payment Protection Insurance (PPI) was a form of insurance that was sold alongside certain financial products such as mortgages, loans and credit cards to offer consumer protection if payments were missed due to a life event such as redundancy or ill health. It was uncovered that PPI was mis-sold to millions of customers over a prolonged period of time. Those that were mis-sold the product were able to claim compensation and refunds for this miss-selling. The deadline to make a claim was 29 August 2019 and this means for the majority of people it is no longer possible to make a claim.
If you have submitted a claim prior to the deadline this will still be considered and payments are still be made to eligible claimants. If you have not heard back from the bank or business that you have submitted your claim to you should follow this up as soon as possible.
The Money Saving Expert website has a useful toolkit to help answer any of your further PPI enquiries: PPI Fact sheet.
I used a claim handling company to help re-claim my Payment Protection Insurance and they are chasing me for money, what can I do?
A number of customers who were mis-sold PPI used a claim handling company to manage their claims. These companies tended to charge a fee for successful reclaims. In many cases this was as a % of the sum recovered to the mis-sold customer. The customer would usually sign a contract or terms & conditions when they first instructed this work. If you have a dispute with the level of fee charged you should refer to this in the first instance and raise a complaint directly with the claim handling company.
In some cases, the claim handling firm deducted their fees directly from the payments made from the bank before sending the balance to customers. In other cases, payments were sent directly to the customer which meant that they had to pay the claim handling company after receiving the funds. There have been a number of instances where there has been a significant gap from the customer receiving the funds and the claims handling company issuing an invoice and the funds received having already being spent by the compensated customer. If you have received an invoice from a claim handling company that you are struggling to pay this you should refer to our article - What can I do about my debts?