Progress with PPI not fast enough
January 19, 2009 by admin
Filed under News, News-Loans
Senior officials from the UK’s financial regulator, the Financial Services Authority, have said that progress is not being made quickly enough in the crackdown on the mis-selling of PPI. Payment Protection Insurance has been at the centre of investigations and controversy for some time after investigations revealed that it was commonly mis-sold by lenders and providers.
This cover is sold alongside finance such as loans, credit cards, and other forms of finance, and is designed to meet repayments for a specified period in the event that the policyholder cannot work due to redundancy, sickness, and injury.
It was found during investigations over the past couple of years that this type of cover was being massively mis-sold in a number of ways. Some lenders and providers were selling it to consumers that did not even qualify to make a claim, some were making out that it was a compulsory cover when it is not, some were hard selling the cover to consumers that did not want to take it out, and some even added PPI to finance without the knowledge or consent of the borrower.
For the past couple of years the FSA has been trying to crackdown on the mis-selling of this cover, and has slapped a number of lenders and firms with hefty fines in relation to the sale of this cover. However, the FSA has said that it is disappointed with how slowly progress is being made in rectifying the situation.
Hector Sants, FSA chief executive, said: “Progress made by firms in sorting out the issue has been disappointing.”
The FSA has carried out mystery shopping exercises in order to determine how bad the problem still is, and this has revealed that policies are still being widely mis-sold to consumers.
