Claim for MPPI 10 years premiums refund

nino54

Hello. I am knew and I thought I had opened this thread last night but I cannot find it now. So excuse meif I am perhaps duplicating it.

Britannia BS gave me a mortgage and an MPPI cover through their insurance. In 2000 I redeemed the mortgage and left the BS to look after my house deeds. I did not cancel the MPPI because I thought it wise to retain the sickness and unemployement risk cover that came with it.
In 2003 I asked them to remove the unemployement cover , which they did and they wrote to me : (...)" you are able to continue with this policy" (meaning I did not have to cancel it entirely simply because I had wanted to remove part of the cover).

But then .... I noticed this paragraph in an old letter of theirs :

(...)to be eligible for our Payment Protection cover you must be:

• aged over 18 or under 85 and have a Britannia Building Society mortgage

OR

• aged over 18 and under 65 and have a mortgage agreeement with another Lender.

I thought I should check with them that I was still entitled to the cover even though I no longer had a mortage on my house since 2001.
In June 2009 they wrote: "I can confirm in the event of an accident or sickness you would be able to claim on the insurnace policy".
I was no longer convinced by then that they knew their stuff and so I asked them to have their underwriters to send me a letter in confirmation of the validity of the cover even without the existence of a mortgage on my property.
The reply that came was not from their underwriters, and it reads:
"(...) As you do not have a mortage you would be unable to claim under the policy. The policy is not an income protection policy, it is to cover mortgage payments only. We have referred to our specialit advisory team and they have advised us to cancel the policy back from the start of the year as a gesture of goodwill. We cannot give a refund any further back because it is YOUR RESPONSIBILITY TO ADVISE US WHEN COVER IS NO LONGER REQUIRED".
They then proceeded to refund me , as a gesture of goodwill, the premiums I had paid since 2009 only.

I am not happy with that at all. The BS had given me a mortgage, the BS had sold me an insurance valid only if a mortage existed on the house, the BS received full redemption of the mortgage and instructions to safekeep the deeds of my house and now they imply ignorance and blame me for not advising them that the cover was no longer required.

I have in mind of suing them by taking them to the Small Claim Court for a refund of just under one thousand pound they have been taking from me without any rights.

Any of you have been or find themselves in the same circumstance ?
What is you openion and suggestions on how to proceed with this matter ?
Regards
Nino

di3004

nino54 wrote: »

Hello. I am knew and I thought I had opened this thread last night but I cannot find it now. So excuse meif I am perhaps duplicating it.

Britannia BS gave me a mortgage and an MPPI cover through their insurance. In 2000 I redeemed the mortgage and left the BS to look after my house deeds. I did not cancel the MPPI because I thought it wise to retain the sickness and unemployement risk cover that came with it.
In 2003 I asked them to remove the unemployement cover , which they did and they wrote to me : (...)" you are able to continue with this policy" (meaning I did not have to cancel it entirely simply because I had wanted to remove part of the cover).

But then .... I noticed this paragraph in an old letter of theirs :


(...)to be eligible for our Payment Protection cover you must be:

• aged over 18 or under 85 and have a Britannia Building Society mortgage

OR

• aged over 18 and under 65 and have a mortgage agreeement with another Lender.

I thought I should check with them that I was still entitled to the cover even though I no longer had a mortage on my house since 2001.
In June 2009 they wrote: "I can confirm in the event of an accident or sickness you would be able to claim on the insurnace policy".
I was no longer convinced by then that they knew their stuff and so I asked them to have their underwriters to send me a letter in confirmation of the validity of the cover even without the existence of a mortgage on my property.
The reply that came was not from their underwriters, and it reads:
"(...) As you do not have a mortage you would be unable to claim under the policy. The policy is not an income protection policy, it is to cover mortgage payments only. We have referred to our specialit advisory team and they have advised us to cancel the policy back from the start of the year as a gesture of goodwill. We cannot give a refund any further back because it is YOUR RESPONSIBILITY TO ADVISE US WHEN COVER IS NO LONGER REQUIRED".
They then proceeded to refund me , as a gesture of goodwill, the premiums I had paid since 2009 only.

I am not happy with that at all. The BS had given me a mortgage, the BS had sold me an insurance valid only if a mortage existed on the house, the BS received full redemption of the mortgage and instructions to safekeep the deeds of my house and now they imply ignorance and blame me for not advising them that the cover was no longer required.

I have in mind of suing them by taking them to the Small Claim Court for a refund of just under one thousand pound they have been taking from me without any rights.

Any of you have been or find themselves in the same circumstance ?
What is you openion and suggestions on how to proceed with this matter ?
Regards
Nino

Hi Nino and welcome.;)

Will keep bumping this up for you, as I believe that Dunstonh may be able to give some answers in regards of your post, as its regarding mortgage insurance.;)

Good luck with this and hopefull Dunstonh will will up soon for you.

Di

melorablack

Personally I think they are right. It is a mortgage protection policy, not an income protection policy. If you don't have a mortgage you have nothing to protect under this policy.

dunstonh

standalone PPI plans pay out with no link to a mortgage. MPPI plans have to have a mortage running.

The issue regarding a refund back to 2000 though is a sticky one.

It is the responsibility of the sales agent to ensure eligibility at point of sale. However, the agent or insurer has no liability if in future the eligibility ceases and you do not contact the insurer or agent.

The lender would not know what insurances you have in force as people can stop, start and change and the lender is not required to know. Even if the product held was arranged by the same group, the insurer themselves is not able to be told by the bank to stop the payment. Only the policyholder can do that. The only thing you may have some scope on is that the bank could have told you to check your insurances when you redeemed the mortgage. However, that is a bit of a stab in the dark.

If your communications in 2003 were with the insurer directly and you made them aware at that point there was no mortgage then they should have picked it up then. However, that would require making a complaint to the insurer and not the agency (the lender).

nino54

Your post record is terrific ! I feel privilidged by the attention you have given to this thread. Thank you.

Two "financial" products are sold by the same source. When the reason for the more dependant than the two ceases to exhist, but the premiums are still collected - paid by direct debit, by the way, not by standing order - the responsibility lays not with the seller of the two products but with the other signatory of the contract ?!.
At the very least I would have assumed it can be viewed as a 50/50 fault case.
Whilst I understand the "underwriters" of the scheme would not have known if not oherwise notified by the BS, it was nevertheless the BS that sold me the policy and must have become aware of my changed circumstances at the time the mortgage was repaid in full !
Yet the BS failed to inform me and instead misled me in two of their letters.Where is the best advice in this ?
The underwriters only run the scheme, ok, and are therefore totally extraneus to outside matters but I fail to understand how the BS should not be apportioned with blame in this story. They were happy to take my money, keep mum and lying until I blew the trumpet ! Is this ethical or is this tantamount to theft ?

Am I just ranting here and saying a lot of cobblers here ?

Thanks and regards

Nino

nino54

I have reviewed the letters from Britannia since inception. They have been calling it "Payment Protection Insurance" and ASU from 1995 to 2004 when they announced a change of underwriters and some improvements (?!) to the scheme but now called the scheme for the FIRST TIME "Mortgage Protection Policy Insurance".
It looks like they modified the terms of the contract without fully explain what the consequences were.

marshallka

nino54 wrote: »

I have reviewed the letters from Britannia since inception. They have been calling it "Payment Protection Insurance" and ASU from 1995 to 2004 when they announced a change of underwriters and some improvements (?!) to the scheme but now called the scheme for the FIRST TIME "Mortgage Protection Policy Insurance".
It looks like they modified the terms of the contract without fully explain what the consequences were.

Just been googling something and noticed your post here. I had a policy with Cardif Pinnacle and it was actually taken out as ASU and they are calling it MPPI. I always thought this was just income protection also and my documents do not mention it as Mortgage protection insurance only ASU although found the terms and conditions do mention it as MPPI.

dunstonh

ASU is MPPI. it had a generic name change a few years back. The name change had no impact on the product. Indeed, many still refer to it generically as ASU out of habit.

P.s. mashallka, I havent ignored your PM. Just finding it hard to get a straight answer from anyone. I have an idea myself and others agree but its different to what Pinnacle are saying. We are trying to look for any rule change that may have occured but nothing yet.

marshallka

dunstonh wrote: »

ASU is MPPI. it had a generic name change a few years back. The name change had no impact on the product. Indeed, many still refer to it generically as ASU out of habit.

P.s. mashallka, I havent ignored your PM. Just finding it hard to get a straight answer from anyone. I have an idea myself and others agree but its different to what Pinnacle are saying. We are trying to look for any rule change that may have occured but nothing yet.

Hi dunstonh, I cannot get a straight answer from anyone at Pinnacle and everyone says to refer to terms and conditions but there is no mention in terms and conditons of this.

I do know that you cannot actually insure yourself for more than your income (which is what we have been doing) but Cardif just continue to say "you CAN claim on both policies" which is correct in a way BUT only ONE of their advisors have actually told the truth in emails stating that by claiming on both one would reduce the other to the income limit and they fail to say about if we received full pay from work for the first 26 weeks as to if they would pay out and have continued to ignore that question even of today. Also I forgot to add in complaint to Pinnacle my hubby actually gets a good redundancy package if he was ever made redundant and I did not know that this would also be taken into account (money in lieu) of that before looking at a previous post on here about Cardif Pinnacle. In fact the whole policy would not have benefited us at all. This guy from Cardif is quite confident he will win my complaint which really and truely is bugging me more than ever to fight my corner and find out as much as possible about this over insuring and duplication of cover etc. (At least i am learning or trying to lol).

If we had have had a claim on both policies and used them to the maximum we would actually have been 35% better off being ill. We have been insured with PHI since 2001 and took out the policy with Cardif in 2004. This cannot be correct in what they state (although they only state "in their opinion") if you are not allowed to insure (well you can but you would not actually benefit) for more than what your normal income is.

Most providers I have spoken to have said that we would have no need to insure MPPI as it would not pay both. Only Cardif are saying otherwise!!! I wonder why???? It has been cancelled now but its OK to say "in their opinion" they WOULD have paid out when in reality it was a risk and we would only have found out for definate if we had needed to claim. Insurance should not be a gamble... obviously with Cardif they offer no advice and their terms and conditions are not enough to actually "know" anything.

Thanks anyway.

dunstonh

The rules as I understand them is that there is a 60-75% limit on protection (depending on whether its employer paid/self paid as to how much the limit is) and that it includes ALL income protections. Not just ASU/MPPI, PPI, PHI, loan/credit card, employer sick pay, waiver of premium on pensions even.

However, there may be a little clause that exists that if the payment protection goes towards the mortgage (or related item) without actually being paid to your account first, then it does not go towards the limit. If it does that it doesnt get included in any means tests for benefits (unlike those that pay to your account). However, getting confirmation on whether it is included in the overall limit is difficult. It's also a bit outside of my normal area and I'm rusty when it comes to protection (I employ another adviser to handle protections but he is on holiday at the moment).

marshallka

dunstonh wrote: »

The rules as I understand them is that there is a 60-75% limit on protection (depending on whether its employer paid/self paid as to how much the limit is) and that it includes ALL income protections. Not just ASU/MPPI, PPI, PHI, loan/credit card, employer sick pay, waiver of premium on pensions even.

However, there may be a little clause that exists that if the payment protection goes towards the mortgage (or related item) without actually being paid to your account first, then it does not go towards the limit. If it does that it doesnt get included in any means tests for benefits (unlike those that pay to your account). However, getting confirmation on whether it is included in the overall limit is difficult. It's also a bit outside of my normal area and I'm rusty when it comes to protection (I employ another adviser to handle protections but he is on holiday at the moment).

Thanks for that again dunstonh. The terms and conditions make no mention of how the benefit would have been paid either and I always assumed that it was paid over to us as it is not attached to any mortgage and we did not have to give details at the time of taking it out of who our mortgage was with etc. In fact it was only called ASU and I actually thought it was income protection.

On their site now it states that the MPPI is paid directly to you if you need to claim. It also mentions it is paid in addition to Statutory Sick pay BUT does not make a mention of company sick pay which is what my husband gets.

http://www.helpucover.co.uk/product/mortgage-protection/page/policy-details/

It does not mention in my terms and conditions though at all about how you are paid.