Important! Have you been Plevined?

Have you been Plevined? Almost certainly you’ve no idea. Yet last week the financial regulator the FCA launched a two year PPI reclaiming deadline, even getting Arnie to star in its ads. Yet our Money Saving terminator Martin Lewis’ been at the forefront of PPI reclaiming for a decade, and now he’s ‘back’ saying everyone should be asking themselves about this hidden new Plevin PPI rule. Q. First the basics – what is PPI and this deadline?

Payment Protection Insurance - PPI - was systemically missold by banks and building societies who for decades used hard sells or even lies to add it to loans, credit cards, mortgages and other forms of debt – already well over £27 billion has been paid back.

Common types of misselling include

- people were lied to that they had to have it (it was never compulsory)- people had it added without their permission- lied to that it’d get them a better deal - given it when it was inappropriate such as ‘unemployment cover’ for those who were self-employed, or not being asked about pre-existing conditions that could invalidate it.

It was said to cover your repayments if you lost your job or got sick, but actually at most it paid out for a year, and the maximum pay-out for some policies was actually less than it cost.

If you think you may be owed money – or haven’t a clue - don’t delay check now. You don’t need to pay a firm to find your PPI or get it back for you; you can do it for FREE. For full help see Martins free PPI reclaiming tool (incl Plevin) tool & help plus there’s more free help at which.co.uk and the fca.org

And it’s worth doing, I’m constantly swamped with successes like Paul Smith who tweeted me “@MartinSLewis I have seen you banging on about PPI for years. I thought I would give it try and I got £18,000 pounds back.”

Q. You asked us, ‘Have you been Plevined’, what’s that about?

At the same time as launching the PPI deadline last week – a totally new category of PPI misselling has been introduced and it’s a total game change. In the past to reclaim PPI you had to have been missold it, this new rules means pretty much if you had PPI from a bank on a product active since 2008 are owed some money.

It’s based on a 2014 court case brought by Susan Plevin. The court ruled that as she wasn’t told about the huge amount of commission taken from her PPI payment – 71% - she was missold it. As when banks sold PPI, they received most of the policies cost in commission, which shows what a bad value product it was.

The regulator’s new Plevin rule says if over 50% of your PPI’s cost went as commission to the lender, and that wasn’t explained to you, you are due back the extra above that.

And staggering the AVERAGE commission banks were paid was 67%, and I’ve never heard of anyone who was told about it. This means millions of people who’ve had PPI, even if it were sold right in every other way are due something back. On a £10,000 loan over 5 years, 'Plevin' compensation would typically be £500 and a lot more if you were missold in other ways.

Q. So for those who have been Plevined, what do they do?

This depends on your situation and whether you’ve tried to reclaim PPI in the past…

- Already claimed and received money. If you’ve claimed PPI on that policy in the past and got your money, you’re not getting any more with Plevin, you don’t get to double dip (yet if you’ve other policies they may still have been missold’

- Previously had a PPI claim rejected by bank or Ombudsman? If you had a bank’s policy PPI in place at some point since roughly 2008, you are likely to be due money from Plevin. The banks have to write to 1.2m people in this situation by the end of November. Yet there’s no need to wait if you think you’re due you can contact them now.

- Never claimed before. Well assuming you had PPI, first check if you were missold in any other way as if so then you get all the PPI money back, with Plevin it’s only a proportion. If you think you have been missold in another way, Plevin will be looked at automatically as part of it.

If you don’t think you were missold in any other way you can start a claim purely over the ‘undisclosed high commission’. For full easy step-by-step free help on starting a claim use the links above