Barclays Bank and going to make payments on a no quibble basis to all those that had made a complaint before the date of the High Court ruling in an attempt to clear the huge back log of complaints that is has to deal with. Claimants will also get 8% interest added to the amount they recover. It is believed that this will effect tens of thousands of people.

Iain Lock managing partner of Q&A Law said “ this is great news for customers who have had to wait an incredible amount of time to get back money that is rightfully theirs. This is a good move by the bank but we would like to see the others follows suit to help those that have been kept waiting as a consequence of the Judicial Review proceedings taken by the banks.”

Barclays confirmed that it has ring-fenced £1bn to pay out in compensation.

Banks are now required to look at their previous sales procedures and to review all their past sales to see if their customers have a claim for mis-selling, even if the customer has not actually complained.

Complaints timetable

A new temporary timetable to deal with complaints has been introduced to help banks deal with the back log of complaints.

Normally, complaints would have to be dealt with in eight weeks however new complaints made after the 20th April but before 31st August 2011 must be dealt with in 16 weeks. This is to help the banks clear the vast amount of complaints they have received since the Judicial Review decision which has seen them receive tens of thousands of new claims.

PPI complaints made after the 31st of August but before the 31 December 2011 must be dealt with in 12 weeks thereafter the normal eight-week timetable will apply.

Consequently we shall now be resuming complaints on behalf of our many clients.

The Banks seems to accept their fate as a number, particularly Lloyds TSB, who have already announced that they have set aside funds to pay such claims. Whilst they may appeal, it would appear that they have accepted their fate.

If you have any PPI enquiries or wish to pursue a PPI complaint please contact Sophie Highton on 0845 686 8060 or alternatively email shighton@qandalaw.co.uk

There are common factors which the Payment Protection does not cover people for, yet Lenders are failing to carry out fact find and needs assessments with consumers to ensure that they qualify for the insurance.

The easiest way to check if you could have been mis-sold is against the checklist below:

Please note; it is also a good idea to request a copy of the agreement from your Lender, if you do not already have a copy at hand. (This can be requested for the fee of £1 under the Consumer Credit Act)

• Were you told what you were being sold? Did you understand what you were agreeing to?
• Were you self employed, unemployed or retired?
• Have you had any medical problems in the past? Were you asked about your medical history?
• Were you aware stress and back problems were not covered in the insurance policy?
• Has your Lender already been found to have been mis-selling PPI or even fined for it?
• Did you have any other means of making repayments if you were off work due to sickness or accident?
• Did you have any other existing insurance that covered you for being off work?

These are just a few of the common features of mis-sold PPI, if you feel that you may have experienced any of the above then you should make a complaint to your Lender.

Alternatively here at Q & A Law we are a group of qualified solicitors who represent clients who have a valid claim against the lender.  You can phone in or email at our web address, or book a free consultation with a qualified solicitor.

Recently we have had successes from Blackhorse, Lloyds TSB, Welcome Finance, Nationwide, Santander and Loans.co.uk to name but a few.

PPI insurance is often sold at the time of taking out a loan, credit or store card, and is set out to cover your repayments if you are sick, have an accident or lose your job. Although on the surface nothing seems wrong with this, it has been continually mis-sold or even sold without consent to many consumers at a huge cost.

The most important thing is to check if you have been mis sold, you can do this just by looking at this checklist:

1.   Were you told by the lender that the insurance was mandatory, it would give you better credit or even not told about it all?

2.   Were you self employed, unemployed redundant or retired when you took out the loan?
3. Has your provider already been accused or fined for mis-selling PPI insurance?

4. Did you have any medical conditions or were you listed as disabled at time of purchasing? If so it would have likely excluded you from the cover, was this checked by the provider?

Now if any of those apply to you, it is a simple to begin the process of reclaiming.

• You can begin by writing a letter to your bank explaining that you feel you were mis-sold and requesting a copy of your agreement for the sum of £10 for a Subject Access Request (if you do not have your agreement.)
• Your bank will more than likely reject this claim, therefore you can then take it to the Financial Ombudsman Service who have awarded in favour 80% of PPI cases heard. The complaint form from the Ombudsman can be found at this address http://www.financial-ombudsman.org.uk/consumer/complaints.htm
• Or alternatively you could use a solicitor to represent your case and do all of the chasing on your behalf.

Here at Q & A we have recently had successes at £1,653.07 from nationwide, £4,166.33 from Santander, to £14,367.17 from Loans.co.uk and many others.

We are a group of qualified solicitors who represent clients who have a valid claim against the lender.  You can phone in or email at our web address, or book a free consultation with a qualified solicitor.

Primarily the most successful claims are those made within six years of the date the policy was taken out, however if your claim is older than six years and you are either still using it or it ended in the last six years your claim is still valid.

However it is important to consider that when claims are slightly older the chances of success can decrease, this can be due to the lender or FOS questioning whether you had any knowledge of misselling for a period of time prior to you making the claim, for example a previous complaint.

It is possible to claim if the policy is older than six years old and the claimant does still have the paper work; however there can still be a risk of a lower success rate due to how much they can remember about how they were mis sold their policy.

If claimant does not still have the paperwork regarding policies exceeding six years old, it is highly unlikely that their claim will be successful, as lenders are unlikely to still have the records and paperwork.

Prior to January 2010 it was assumed that the claimant could not make a complaint about misselling if they had already made a successful insurance claim, as this assumes that the policy was therefore suitable. However now claimants who have already claimed on their PPI policy can still make a misselling complaint, the success rate of this is unclear, however in the event of unsuccessfulness you are still able to cancel your insurance policy.

Here at Q and A Law we are a group of qualified legal solicitors who represent clients who may have a valid claim against the lender of their loan for refunding of PPI.

You can phone in or email at our web address, or book a free consultation with a qualified solicitor, with no expense unless the claim is valid!

Following the huge increase in PPI claimant figures, the FSA are expected that their claims could total 550,000 per year for the next 5 years.

The £2.7bn payout is expected to consist of an average compensation from £900 to £1,800, depending on the category of the premium policies.

Lenders have been accused of selling PPI under false pretences by not clarifying Terms and Conditions of the PPI to establish if they qualify for the insurance.  Therefore where the insurance would typically cover those struck by injury, illness or redundancy and ensure their loan repayments, it instead is rejecting any claims.

Many firms have begun rejecting most, if not all their complaints, on the grounds that their borrowers were not mis-sold PPI but were in fact fully aware.  Following this many borrowers have turned to the Financial Ombudsman Service (FOS), where they act purely for the consumer and have ordered many firms to reopen the thousand of claims that have previously been rejected.

Following the continuously growing number of complaints, banks are considering stopping the selling of PPI to all of their own borrowers, for example Lloyds, who stopped selling last month and HSBC who stopped in November 2007.

If you believe you have been mis-sold PPI you need to file a claim to request a refund pertaining premiums.  It has been noticed by claimants that obtaining a lawyer to file and pursue the claim has been more successful than those who pursue claims unrepresented.  Therefore if the bank rejects it, the solicitor will always know the next step to take on a legal level and can represent you to the full extent and entitlement within your legal rights.

Here at Q and A Law we are a group of qualified solicitors who represent clients who have a valid claim against the lender.  You can phone in or email at our web address, or book a free consultation with a qualified solicitor.

The FSA has given banks and other lenders a deadline until 1st December to adopt new rules when dealing with PPI claims.  The FSA have stated that over a five year period they have been looking at PPI selling and they found “wide and deep evidence of weaknesses in PPI sales”.

The FSA has put forward new rules that would require those that sell PPI in the financial services industry to deal with approximately 550,000 complaints a year over the next five years.

There have been for many years pressure from consumer groups and those involved in the industry accusing the sellers in PPI in engaging in widespread “protection rackets”.

Iain Lock, managing Partner, says “The vast number of cases we have dealt with over the years demonstrates that the selling of PPI has been aggressive and in many circumstances unnecessary and does not fulfil the purchaser’s requirements.  Lenders have clearly abused their position of trust when selling the insurance policies to people that were ultimately not able to claim on them or was sold policies that they did not need.  A common occurrence is where a person has bought a policy that will cover them for sickness if they are away from work for a long period, however, their employment contract provides them with six month’s full pay and six month’s half pay.  In these circumstances, the person is more than able to continue to repay their loan commitments and do not need PPI.  We welcome any action that would assist people in recovering their PPI premiums where they have been mis-sold.”

The key features of the new rules are as follows:

1.                   A person should be reimbursed their PPI premiums plus interest if the PPI provider decides the customer would not have bought the policy in the first place.

2.                   Where the premium was a single premium payment up front, if the PPI provider concludes the customer would have bought a regular premium policy instead, they obviously should be put back in the position they would have been had they done so.

The Competition Commission will announce in the next few months rules to prohibit the sale of PPI policies at the point when somebody is obtaining a loan.

The report was subsequently challenged by a number of banks who then appealed to the Competition Appeal Tribunal (CAT). The banks had specific concerns with the point-of-sale ban. The CAT ruled that the CC had to consider the importance of a potential drawback to the prohibition, namely that it might inconvenience customers.

In its decision, the CC has concluded that whilst the consumer may be more inconvenienced by having to shop around, this is outweighed by the benefits of introducing such a ban and increasing competition which would lower prices in the market.

The CC has invited comments on its provisional decision before publishing its final verdict in July. The CC has said that if its proposals are upheld they will introduce them as soon as possible.

Read more on The Guardian’s report.

MPPI is also known as accident, sickness and unemployment (ASU) insurance. It is a cheaper type of income protection that pays out for shorter periods of time –typically one to two years.

Cardif Pinnacle said that the price rise was a direct result of more people making claims on their insurance in 2009, as the recession hit and more people found themselves out of work.

Assurant has also raised its premiums for some customers, citing “exceptional” volumes of claims over the past 24 months. One policyholdercomplained to Assurant after his premiums rose from £82.50 to £143 per month – a 74 % increase.

These increases come just six months after the Financial Services Authority (FSA) intervened last year to force insurers to rebate millions of customers who had faced premiuim increases on their payment protection insurance policies in 2009.

The FSA was concerned that insurers had not been clear or fair enough about their right to increase premiums. Insurers were required to tighten their policy paperwork and small print before notifying customers of any further rate changes.

But the FSA has since clarified that the “onus was on the business to decide what is fair”.
“We are not specific about what is fair in terms of a change to premium but if a firm said they were getting increased claims that would be a valid reason for increasing premiums,” says an FSA spokesman. “If customers are not happy with the premium increase and think it unfair, they can cancel the policy.”

The Association of British Insurers (ABI) agrees with the FSA that insurers need to be able to show that any premium increases are “proportionate” to any increase in their claims costs. But policyholders who are unhappy with premium increases that have come into effect this year are advised not to cancel a policy too quickly, as they may find it hard to buy new like-for-like cover.

Some insurers have tightened terms recently, by increasing qualifying periods – the amount of time a person has to be off work before they can make a claim – from 30 to 60 days. Individuals whose health has worsened will also find it harder to obtain equivalent cover, as will those working in sectors that pose a greater risk of redundancy.

“In my view people working for Cadbury’s, airlines, the construction industry and financial services sector should stick with their existing policy,” says Bob Cook, of Platinum Financial Consulting, the independent financial advisers.

“Better quality products may emerge at a more reasonable premium later in the year. If that coincides with the start of a recovery in the job market, that may be a much better time to review your options.”

Insurers have until the end of June to refund premium increases made in 2009.

Call 0845 486 8060 now or visit www.ppiclaimsspecialists.co.uk to start your claim online.