More than two-thirds of complaints about controversial insurance resolved in favour of customer by Financial Ombudsman
The number of complaints to the financial ombudsman over mis-sold Payment Protection Insurance (PPI) leapt to 30,301 between October and December 2011, 57% more than in the previous three months, according to the Financial Ombudsman. The figure represents about a third of PPI complaints received last year.
More than two-thirds (68%) of cases were resolved in favour of the customer, down from 92% between July and September, the ombudsman said. The controversial insurance, designed to protect people in case of illness or unemployment, had been sold with mortgages, loans and credit cards since the 1990s. Up to 6.5m policies a year were sold, but banks received 1m complaints regarding the policies in 2011 alone.
To cover its costs of handling PPI cases, the ombudsman proposed charging financial firms a supplementary case fee of £350 in addition to the standard case fee of £500 for each PPI mis-selling case referred to the service. But the fee will be chargeable only when businesses have more than 25 cases a year.
Natalie Ceeney, chief ombudsman, wrote in the latest Financial Ombudsman Service newsletter: “The challenges of our PPI workload are unprecedented. The number of new complaints about mis-sold PPI that we are assuming we will receive in 2012/2013 – 165,000 – will account for around 60% of our new cases next year.
“But we could receive a significantly higher or lower number than this – and there is considerable uncertainty about the volume of these cases in future years.”
Sally Bowyer, Managing Director of leading claims firm, BrunelFranklin.com said: “So few people know that they were ever sold PPI that some commentators believe there may be 30-35 million policies in existence, the majority of which could have been mis-sold. If you have genuinely been mis-sold a policy, you should be looking to get back your full premium plus interest, by way of fair redress.”
Learn more about PPI refunds and find out if you could apply for a refund today! Visit the website www.brunelfranklin.com or call Brunel Franklin, free, on 0800 051 54 51