In preparing our group legal action we have carried out extensive research into the history of PPI and the conduct of the banks and regulators.
Our research reveals how the financial institutions have exploited customers for years, despite the fact that problems with PPI have been consistently raised in the public domain.
• Even though the financial institutions have paid out more than £36 billion in PPI compensation, they have still made tens of billions of pounds of profits from the abusive insurance product.
• Banks and credit card companies were charging up to 95 per cent of the premium cost in secret commissions when they sold PPI. The average undisclosed commission is thought to have been about 78 per cent.
• The first PPI claim for mis-selling was in 1993 against TSB bank. The claim was settled with a ten-year gagging order.
• The issue of PPI being bad value for customers and the fact it was being mis-sold was raised in 1995, 2003 and 2005 by Citizens Advice.
• In 1998, Which? magazine started a long running campaign warning how PPI was bad value in a series of articles.
• The profits for banks from selling PPI, partly because of the secret commissions, were so large that some started to put the money from the sales offshore to lower their tax burden.
• In 1999 Banks set up “Protect” a trade association of 19 banks with PPI interests to “counter any negative publicity” about PPI. They have done a good job: PPI is often spoken about as though is a problem caused by Claims Management Companies, instead of the scandal it was.
• Despite years of warning, the Government and financial regulators were very slow to react and have failed to help consumers to be fully compensated.
Check Now• Banks initially used the courts to try to block demands by the financial services regulator to compensate customers for mis-selling PPI.
• Despite being consistently fined for failing to administer PPI mis-selling payouts and charging eye-watering high secret commissions, the financial institutions tried to claim they were the victims of fraud by the public.
• Financial institutions have spent millions of pounds trying to stop this new wave of PPI secret commissions claims by hiring expensive lawyers to defend individual claims.
• Banks and credit card companies have failed to reply to tens of thousands of requests on behalf of customers who want to know how much PPI secret commission they were charged.
