The figures surrounding the PPI scandal are already staggering. What’s arguably more staggering is that many thousands of people still haven’t claimed what they’re owed. The total amount paid out since January 2011 has already gone well beyond £21 billion.

By the time the whole mess is tied off, it’s estimated the total bill will be closer to £35 billion.

That goes to show that while many people have got their money back, a great deal more still haven’t.

One reason so many people still haven’t claimed is simply because they don’t know they have a claim. One way that PPI was routinely mis-sold was to add it on to the finance agreement without the customer’s knowledge.

When that happened, the customer was unknowingly paying out for the product month after month. They believed each repayment was purely for the loan or finance agreement when in fact a portion of it was repaying the PPI as well.

The team over at http://ppiclaimsandadvice.com have been helping many people get back money they didn’t even realise they were owed. For some people, that refund
has been in the tens-of-thousands of pounds.

With a deadline for claiming imminent, it’s important you double check your records to make sure you aren’t due a refund too. Once the deadline hits, there’ll be no route for recourse after that.

Uncovering Hidden PPI

It’s quite normal to discard old paperwork when the finance agreement has run its course. So how can you find hidden PPI if you no longer have your records?

One way is to run a credit check on yourself. A credit check will pull up your financial history, showing you what loans and finance agreements you’ve had in the past and with which lenders.

There are a number of firms that offer such a service. One well know firm is Credit Expert, owned by Experian. They offer a free trial period to use the service, after which there’s a monthly fee (cancel the trial before it ends and you won’t have to pay).

Another similar service is by Noddle, which is free all the time.

Sign up for the service, follow the instructions and download your report. Print it out if you have a printer and then go through it — carefully, of course — to locate any PPI you weren’t aware of, or which you’d forgotten about.

PPI often went by other names, hence the reason for going through the report carefully. It may have been sold as ASU or something similar. Whatever name it’s listed under, if you find instances of PPI that are a surprise to you, then it was almost certainly mis-sold and you should be due a refund.

No Account Numbers or Paperwork

There’s much debate about whether you should claim PPI by yourself or have a PPI claim company do it for you. As with many things in life, there isn’t a right or wrong answer. It’s largely a personal choice based on your own circumstances.

One area where it can make more sense to use a company rather than handling it alone is if you no longer have your paperwork and/or account numbers. Some companies, like the one mentioned at the top of the article, have negotiated special agreements with many of the main banks and lenders.

These agreements allow them to get claims started without account numbers and without paperwork. It’s an agreement specific to some companies and isn’t available to individuals claiming by themselves. For many people, this not only makes a slow and laborious process quicker, but it’s also far less stressful.

Whichever way you decide to claim your money back, just make sure you do it soon. Once the deadline is official, the clock will be ticking and it will count down to zero much quicker than you probably realise.

There are quite a few things you can do to improve your financial situation. Transferring your existing credit card balance to a new card is one thing that can help move your financial situation forward. Another is to claim back the money that is rightfully yours from any mis-sold financial products.

Banks, brokers and lenders have a legal and moral duty to ensure you are sold products that are in your best interests and that put you in a better position than you would have been without it.

Payment protection insurance is one such product that was routinely mis-sold for many years and now hundreds-of-thousands of people are claiming their money back. But how far back can you claim PPI?

There’s a lot of misunderstandings about that question, which we’ll help to clarify now.

• The Misconception of The Six Year Rule:

If you’ve heard you can only claim back up to six years on your PPI policies, then you may have been misled, and you’re not alone. This is a common misconception that has stopped thousands of people getting their money back.

First, let’s define what the six year rule actually is: it relates to how long your bank or lender has to keep copies of your records after your policy has ended and has nothing to do with how old your actual policy may or may not be.

The key point in that above statement is ‘after your policy has ended’. The rule only comes into effect when your policy has reached its natural end point or, if it was cancelled before that time, from the point of cancellation. It is from that point in time that your lender has to keep your records for a further six years.

However, if your policy is still live – regardless of whether it was taken out a year ago or 15 years ago – then you can still claim on it without any fears of having gone past the so-called six year stage.

• What About Pre-2005 Policies?

PPI sold prior to 2005 also hits the headlines for being difficult, if not impossible, to claim on, which is also not entirely true. Sure, some pre-2005 policies can be trickier than others to claim on, but far from impossible.

The reason these policies have garnered this reputation is because the body that regulates financial institutions – the Financial Ombudsman Service (FOS) – aren’t able to adjudicate on these policies because the financial institutions were subject to different regulations at that time.

However, there is a loophole that means you can claim on pre-2005 policies, which is to claim against the company that underwrote the policy. There’s a caveat to that though: you have to be able to prove a link between the underwriter and the bank or broker that sold you the policy.

If you can’t prove a link, you’re less likely to be successful with your claim if you’re handling your claim by yourself.

• In Summary

You can claim on mis-sold PPI far more than you may have been led to believe.
The six year rule is not related to how far back you can claim once you’ve taken the policy
out, but is in fact related to when the policy ended. If your policy is still live, regardless of
when it was taken out, you can make a claim.
The six year rule relates to how long your lender must keep hold of your file after the point
of expiry.
Policies sold prior to 2005 can be claimed on, but you may have to claim against the
underwriter rather than the seller of the policy and you must be able to prove a link
between the two. Prove the link and you should be on your way to receiving your refund.