Mis Sold PPI - A Very Controversial Subject in UK

Payment Protection Insurance, otherwise known as PPI, has been a very controversial subject for a number of years now. The mis selling of PPI by numerous financial institutions, including most of the major banks and building societies in the UK, has resulted in one of the biggest financial selling scandals for many years. You may have heard on the news or read in the papers about the recent High Court Judicial Review relating to mis sold PPI, where the banks were trying to get out of adhering to the guidelines stipulated by the Financial Services Authority ('the FSA') which had ordered the guilty financial institutions to pro-actively review their customer records and contact any and all customers who may have been mis sold PPI, even if that customer had not yet registered a PPI claim.They of course lost the challenge and the fact that they had the gall to make such a challenge has thrown a further dark cloud over the ethics of the UK financial services industry. They simply want to draw out their responsibility to correct the damage they have clearly caused by the mis sale of PPI over many years and to millions of customers. The bill that the banks are likely to have to deal with is expected to total many billions of pounds. So, what exactly is PPI and how is mis sold PPI classified? And more to the point, how do you make mis sold PPI claims if you think you suspect this has happened to you?Payment Protection Insurance (PPI) was supposedly designed to protect those who had taken out loans (or any form of credit) and were unable to continue to make the payments as a result of accident, injury, illness or involuntary unemployment. On the face of it, PPI sounds like a very responsible insurance to be sold to credit customers. However it has been scandalously mis sold by nearly all major lending institutions for many years resulting in this huge scandal which the banks now have to deal with to repay the damage caused to their many innocent victims.There are numerous ways in which PPI was deemed to have been Mis Sold PPI. Many lenders gave the impression that it was compulsory, part of the loan, and did not really give the customer the opportunity to decide whether they wanted it or not. In other cases, a PPI policy may have been sold which does not cover the full term of the loan, rendering it potentially useless to the customer. Other customers may have simply had PPI added to their loan without even being aware of it, so they did not even know at the time of taking out the loan that PPI was included at all.Many thousands of people have been affected by this ugly financial selling scandal, but if you suspect you or someone close to you may have been affected and been a victim of this mis selling at any point then you should take action now so that you can claim the compensation you deserve. If you have taken out a loan or credit of any sort over the last 10 years it is worth checking through your paperwork. You may not even know that you had PPI - and if you did not then you certainly have the basis of a claim simply for that reason.There are various options you have if you think you may have the basis of a valid PPI claim. However, the most important thing you must do is 'take action', and do it soon. There will only be a certain window of time open to make PPI claims, and you will be expected to put your claim forward within this time window.You could try and handle the claim yourself and there are set letters and advice you can find online to do just this. But, after everything they have done, can you trust the banks (or 'lender') to tell you the truth? If they come back to you and deny that you have a valid claim, do you trust that this is 100% true? What if they accept they did mis sell PPI and make you an offer of compensation? How do you know the offer is the maximum amount you have the right to claim? What if the case is referred to the financial Ombudsman, would you know how to deal with the matter in this instance?The bottom line is that although you could process your own PPI claim, you take a risk. The prudent choice is putting the matter in the hands of professionals. There are various professional PPI Claims companies operating across the UK who specialise in dealing with banks (and other 'lenders') and processing PPI claims on a daily basis. They know when a claim is valid and they know how to force the banks into paying the maximum amount of PPI claim compensation due to you. They can take care of the entire work for you, keeping you up to date, and many of them will not charge you a penny unless they successfully gain a compensation payment for you. They operate on a no win, no fee basis.