Millions more now due PPI compensation

A major rule change means even just having had PPI almost certainly means you are owed money

Millions more consumers are due PPI compensation even if they’ve been rejected previously, says the UK’s biggest consumer website MoneySavingExpert.com – whose users have to date downloaded more than 6.6m of its free template PPI reclaim letters. Today the FCA starts the clock on the two-year PPI reclaiming deadline, and as part of that, claims on the back of the Plevin court case can now be dealt with. 

The Plevin court ruling came in 2014, and has been the cause of much consternation for the regulator and firms as to how it is to be interpreted under mainstream reclaiming. It’s all about the outrageous commissions that banks and building societies received from insurers for selling their Payment Protection Insurance policies alongside loans, credit cards, mortgages and other debt.  

These commissions averaged 67 per cent – in other words, two-thirds of the cost of PPI wasn’t anything to do with insurance, it just paid for sales – and these policies were often nearly pure profit rather than any form of actual security for those who got them. 

MoneySavingExpert.com founder Martin Lewis explains what this means:

“The big question now is… have you been Plevined? This new form of PPI mis-selling turns the whole thing on its head.

“Until now, you were usually only due money back from PPI if the firm had either given you an inappropriate policy, such as employment cover for the self-employed, or lied to you, like saying PPI was compulsory. Yet with Plevin, in most cases it’s simply a case of ‘Did you have PPI? Then you are owed money.’