New restrictions could be brought in over PPI sales
Payment Protection Insurance, also referred to simply as PPI, has been at the centre of controversy for the last couple of years, and this followed reports that many lenders and providers were actually mis-selling this costly cover. PPI is designed to meet repayments on debts such as loans, credit cards, and mortgage if the policy holder cannot work due to illness, injury, or redundancy, and payments are covered for a specified period of time.
However, it has been found that lenders and PPI providers were mis-selling the policies in a number of ways. Some were found to be hard-selling the cover or even telling consumers that they could not get the finance that they needed unless they took out the cover. Some were found to be adding the cover onto finance without even telling the consumer, resulting in the borrower making higher repayments for a policy that they did not ask for and may not even have wanted. Some were even found to have sold the insurance cover to consumers that could never benefit from it because they did not fit the criteria.
However, despite an enormous crackdown on PPI mis-selling and hefty fines being imposed by the UK’s financial authorities there is still a great deal of evidence to suggest that this type of cover is still being mis-sold. The Financial Ombudsman Service has reported that it is still receiving a huge number of complaints relating to PPI. In fact, as a result of the ongoing problem with PPI sales the FOS has called upon regulators to take more action over the mis-selling of this type of cover. Read the rest of this entry »
Popularity: 30% [?]