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.
This entry was posted on Wednesday, January 21st, 2015 at 5:51 pm and is filed under PPI. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.