Banks are writing to PPI victims

After years of mis-selling PPI, banks have allocated approximately £9 billion to pay out. If you've taken out a loan, check the details to see whether it includes insurance. If it does, you could have been paying for an insurance cover which was sold to you unlawfully – and you might not even know about it. This has been happening for a number of years, but now you can get your money back, usually with the help of a PPI claims company, like iSmart Solutions.

PPI stands for ‘Payment Protection Insurance’. It’s designed to cover your loan or credit card repayments in the event of an accident, sickness or unemployment and it’s been widely mis-sold. If you think you’re the victim of this, you may be able to claim compensation.

Last year, the banks challenged the Financial Services Authority (FSA) over guidelines it published saying banks should contact all past customers and invite them to complain, if they thought they had been mis-sold Payment Protection insurance. The courts upheld the ruling, meaning that the banks expect to write between 4 and 12 million letters to those who have been affected. The FSA is ensuring that money lenders send customers jargon-free letters, detailing how policies were sold and found.

The FSA clearly stated that communication with customers should provide a full explanation of the fact that they may have suffered financial loss and could, therefore, be entitled to money back. According to figures provided by the Financial Ombudsman Service (FOS), nearly £2 billion of compensation payments were made last year alone to settle claims. In addition to this, the FOS says that nearly a million mis-sold PPI claims have already been submitted in the last six months.

There is a lot of money still to be claimed. You may be entitled to a part or full refund, depending on the circumstances, and this could add up to a significant amount of money, especially if you have more than one claim.