Feelings are running high this morning in the Payment Protection Market and the consumer pressure groups with news that Barclays and Lloyds TSB are challenging the Competition Commission’s ruling to ban the sale of Payment Protection Insurance at the time of sale of a loan mortgage or credit.
Insurance Blogger thinks this is outrageous after years of expenditure on the investigations by the FSA and Competition Commission and others, and the subsequent fines for misselling, that any institution, let alone a largely Government owned institution Lloyds Bank, should have the right to challenge any such decision!
Payment protection insurance lobbyist Sara-Ann Burgess from specialist payment protection insurance company, Burgesses confirms our viewpoint. She said “These institutions are without morals and intent on putting profit ahead of consumers’ interests.”
“This latest move is a bid by the banks to continue making billions of pounds in profits in order to prop up other failing business areas.
“We all know PPI mis-selling is rife amongst High Street lenders and their resultant profits are obscene. These delaying tactics, lodged to stop the ban going ahead in October 2010, only serve to prove just how shameless these firms are and the extent they will go to protect their ‘cash cows’.”
The UK Protection Insurance sector takes over £5 billion in premiums every year and around 90% of the premiums goes in profit to Banks and Building Societies.
In 2006, the Competition Commission reported the 12 largest distributors made profits of GBP1.4bn – before the recession kicked in and demand for unemployment insurance protection and income protection insurance policies grew.
After a lengthy investigation into anti-competitive practices, the Commission announced in January a series of measures to lower prices and widen choice in the PPI sector.
These included:
axing single premium PPI and replacing with monthly payments.
a seven day ban on selling cover alongside credit.
a requirement to offer PPI separately to credit.
The Financial Ombudsman Service predicted some 30,000 payment protection insurance mis-selling complaints would be received by the end of March this year and confirmed the majority of them can be traced back to High Street lenders.
It upholds at least 90% of cases and in the case of one lender, 100%.
Sara-Ann Burgess concludes: “How can you on the one hand say banks are working to restore confidence and then on the other have two major players challenging decisions in order to maintain gigantic market shares and prevent freedom of choice? Actions are certainly speaking louder than words. These lenders are damaging the financial well-being of consumers and will continue to do so. What’s equally insulting is the fact that Lloyds is paid for by taxpayers and our money is being used to ensure we continue to be ripped off.”
Insurance Blogger couldn’t agree more! The banks created the current recession by the misselling of mortgages and piggybacked missold mortgage payment protection insurance, and now they are trying to retain their ill gotten share of a market that wouldn’t exist if they had done their job properly in the first place.
BancAssurance is a French joke – Keep your noses out of Insurance – Bankers!
For those of you still in a job, we wholeheartedly recommend Burgesses Unemployment Insurance