Sunday 17 March 2013

Are the UK Government using PPI and Banks as a way to put money back into peoples pockets?

Are the UK Government using PPI and Banks as a way to put money back into peoples pockets?

By Dark Politricks

I just saw an advert on Channel 5 USA (a UK channel) in which a PPI Claims company said that if you had taken a loan out within 15 years and had added Payment Protection Insurance (PPI) then you could attempt to claim it back.

Now I had taken a load of loans out in my youth, with PPI, and when the first adverts started appearing the adverts were only saying that you could claim the money back if you had taken a loan out within the past 3 years. I didn't do anything because my loans were 10 years old.

However it seemed that the time length that you could claim for was extending and extending every few months. It seemed to coincide with the UK finances getting worse and our GDP going down and inflation going up.

First I started seeing adverts for 5 then 7 years and then when I first saw an advert earlier this year for 10 years I was straight on the phone. I shouldn't have gone through one of the "specialist PPI companies" however it was money I wouldn't have got back if I hadn't of attempted it in the first place - so in reality it was literally free cash in my pocket.

From an initial 3 years to 15 years is a long time and I have a feeling that the government is hoping that PPI payouts will help stimulate the economy by putting money back into people's pockets in a stealthy Keynesian method without any government minister having to  admit to it of course! Austerity, Austerity - that is the only way says our supposed economic wizard George Osborne.

It is Georgey boy who's claim that our deficit and debt would be reduced through his spending cuts and VAT tax rises would have started working by now. Anyone with half an eye can see they blatantly haven't done the job.

Their are no private jobs rushing in to fill all the public ones he is gutting. He is forcing people off disability allowance onto job-seekers (a much lower benefit) and making them look for jobs that don't exist.

He is introducing "bedroom" taxes  for the poor so that people with extra rooms have to give up more of their money or move across  the country to places where one bedroom flats exist. All the while he is cutting public services and yet at the same time he has reduced the top rate of tax for the richest people in the country. What happened to "We are all in this together"?

The politicians know the banks were mainly to blame for our current crisis and the UK is one of the most indebted nations on the planet.

This doesn't only include Government debt but personal debt as well. All through the later 90's, and the years of the Labour government, people were re-mortgaging their houses and spending the money or having loans literally thrown at them by the banks. I know for a fact I and many other people I know were.

After the first law suit over PPI was won by someone years ago the banks have had to set aside billions in case they had to pay out more to future customers who were mis sold PPI.

From The International Business Times
PPI has become the biggest mis-selling scandal to hit UK banks and they have repeatedly underestimated the scale of the problem.

Britain's biggest retail bank, Lloyds Banking Group Plc , has set aside 6.8 billion pounds for PPI compensation. Barclays Plc has set aside 2.6 billion and RBS has provisioned 2.2 billion.
So far the banks have set aside around £20 billion and the payouts so far amount to £8.9 billion.

Payment Protection Insurance was meant to protect borrowers against redundancy and sickness , but it was often sold to customers who didn't want or need it or who couldn't claim it even if they took it out. People such as those with certain medical conditions or people who were self employed. Often, like myself, I had PPI added to my loans or credit cards without my knowledge!

The worst thing, in my mind anyway, was that if you had to claim (as I did once) the money from the insurance only lasted for a year. Plus the amount the insurance cost you worked out exactly the same as if you had added an extra years worth of  loan to your original debt. It was a total con!

Because the UK finances are in such a state and recent news reports show customers are holding back from buying goods. I have a sneaky feeling that the government is secretly hoping that the PPI payouts will be a way of putting cash into potential shoppers pockets to stimulate the economy. The added benefit of course is that it's all at the cost of the banks who caused the mess in the first place.

To me it sounds like a good plan. The banksters are the ones who caused the mess and I am not joking when I said they used tot literally  throw loans at people.

For instance I was given a £5,000 loan when I left college with no job or way of paying it back. Then every year the same bank would give me an extra £5,000 - £7,000 loan and overdrafts up to £3,500 to pay back the outstanding amount and give me some more spending cash! It was truly a time when "debt was good" and people didn't think about the future.

As a young man who didn't really think he would have to pay back the money anyway (I had a bit of death wish back then, plus the money management skills of a frog) it seemed like free money and I grabbed whatever the banks would offer me. One of the things I often feel our schools let the population down with is real world lessons in living. How to manage money, how to look after yourself, how money works, how to use logic and reason and think for yourself.

Young men are worse than woman who are often taught these skills from their mothers so if the schools are not teaching the boys and they are not getting taught at home they are left to the mercy of the loan sharks and banksters. Shuffling money from one account to another to pay off monthly repayments and sticking to the minimum payment to keep them off your back is not exactly "good" money management!

Unlike other people I know who "went missing" for 5+ years and now have mortgages and are debt free. I honestly OR  stupidly (pick your own word) decided to pay off my debts. Even thought this took over 6 years I managed to do it. Therefore when I saw the opportunity to reclaim all the PPI which amounted to around £5,000 I took it.

Some credit cards I didn't even realise I had PPI on at the time and on other banks I had no details apart from the name of the bank but their customer service department returned a list of 6 loan accounts taken out within 7 years. I used one of these companies on TV but didn't realise they took a THIRD of the money as recompense for doing the job you could easily do yourself.

Luckily for me they forgot about one loan and I got £2,000 all to myself without deductions but I would recommend anyone who has ever taken a loan out in the last 15 years to check if they can reclaim the PPI on it.

The Government is not helping us and the banksters who caused the mess are still making billions therefore we should not feel sorry for them in the slightest.

Just remember if the EU can order the Cypriot government to just take 10% of any bank savings without your say then who is to say the UK government won't do the same?

I would expect the time you can claim for any PPI to continue to go up and up until either the banks have dolled out all the money they said they set aside years ago but haven't given out yet. Or until the UK GDP rises above a single percentage point for more than 3 months in a row!

To anyone thinking of claiming their PPI back I would definitely recommend everyone to do the work themselves. It is not hard.

You can just write t o the banks customer complaints department and ask for all your loan details that had PPI on them, then write a letter back saying you want your PPI money for any of the following reasons:

  1. You were not informed that the PPI protection would only last a year.
  2. The PPI was added without your consent.
  3. You were self employed which meant the PPI wouldn't cover you.
  4. You were depressed or had another medical complaint that would have meant the insurance would not be paid out.
  5. You were not informed you wouldn't get the insurance if you were sacked.
  6. The PPI insurance was not fully explained to you at the time. Most of the employees who sold the PPI will be long gone and those that remain won't remember what  they said when they sold it to you. Therefore this is probably the best one to use as they will not be able to re-call what they said when they sold the loan to you.


A good thing to do is to write off to one of these PPI companies, get a payment pack sent to you and see what sort of questions they ask you to answer. All they do is use the answers and send the paper work off to the same places you could easily do. Therefore use these packs as a guide and write to the same Financial Ombusdman yourself if  the Bank doesn't pay out after your first letter of complaint.

Remember - this could be your chance of getting out of any recent debt. If they are going back 15 years then I would guess that the majority of adults in this country would have had a credit card or loan within than time. Even if you don't think you took PPI out it is worth checking in-case the bank added it on without your knowledge.

View the original article "Are the UK Government using PPI and Banks as a way to put money back into peoples pockets?" at www.darkpolitricks.com

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