Do I have a claim?

mrsa

We took out a mortgage with Skipton Building Society in Sept 2003 which is still running (currently re-mortgaging with different lender) Included in that was PPI to cover £400 p/m which we cancelled last month.
My husband at the time the mortgage was started was self employed. He took an employed job in Jan 2006.

So do we have a claim for mis-sold policy as he was self employed? If so, should the claim ONLY involve the period of time he was self employed or the whole term?

Thanks.

di3004

mrsa wrote: »

We took out a mortgage with Skipton Building Society in Sept 2003 which is still running (currently re-mortgaging with different lender) Included in that was PPI to cover £400 p/m which we cancelled last month.
My husband at the time the mortgage was started was self employed. He took an employed job in Jan 2006.

So do we have a claim for mis-sold policy as he was self employed? If so, should the claim ONLY involve the period of time he was self employed or the whole term?

Thanks.

I will leave this one to dunstonh who i'm sure will have some advice for you on this one, good luck.

McKneff

Why does he think he was mis sold a policy just because he was self employed,
He knew he was sefl employed and still signed up for it. You have had all this
cover for all those years and now you want to claim it back. What would yu
have done if things had gone wrong, yu would have claimed and been happy that
yu had taken out the cover, just because there wasnt occasion to claim you want
the money back. I will be interested what DunsonH has to say also.

2sides2everystory

AFAIK, the only way generally that a claim can be made on a PPI policy when self-employed is to formally give up being self-employed by closing the business and producing accounts evidence to prove it then of course simultaneously having signed on as a job-seeker and of course proving that you are actively seeking alternative employment.

In fact I see that the current Skipton MPPI policy requires that to claim for unemployment having been self-employed not only have you made a definite decision and ceased trading as self-employed but you have told HMRC this (which IIRCC itself used to sometimes cause unexpected expense due to the way self-employed were taxed in arrears). Not sure if that is typically a problem now.

I see that Skipton's Policy has another interesting obstruction for Joint policyholders: Any "successful" claim is adjusted according to each of the joint parties' average incomes for the 12 months before the claim. So if you are both earning and you had been struggling for any lebgth of time with little or no self-employed income for your husband before he jacked in his business for good then the claim benefit would be adjusted on your husband's proportion of the total household income during the bad times leading to the claim not any possibly good tiomes when he may have been earning good money say in the previous year before the business dried up.

It is for these and other reasons that it is now generally accepted that self-employment and PPI do not mix as there were generally too many hoops to negotiate. Such sales of PPI are always at risk of leading to a PPI reclaim for inadequate advice about how the product would work for the individual customer at the point of sale.

I am someone that understands something of the products and their hoops but not the tactics of presenting a claim in thesedays where insurers are wriggling to avoid the mass of misselling claims which has befallen them in so many ways.

Hopefully someone else can advise on that.

src007

mrsa wrote: »

.
My husband at the time the mortgage was started was self employed. He took an employed job in Jan 2006.

So do we have a claim for mis-sold policy as he was self employed? If so, should the claim ONLY involve the period of time he was self employed or the whole term?

PPI complaints are often upheld if the policy was sold to someone who is self-employed. PPI is meant to protect you from ending up in debt. However for the self-employed you often have to prove that your business has ceased trading (sometimes because of an inability to pay debt!).

I think the complaint would be looked upon more sympathetically if you only ask for a refund for the time period your husband was self-employed because this is when he was put a risk, but this is only my opinion,

Whatever people say on here (e.g. Mcknuff), no one can know if the complaint is justified without knowing your husbands business and the terms and conditions of the PPI.

If you do start a complaint its worth considering Skipton's response carefully because building societies tended to act more responsibly than the banks. However if you disagree with what they say, you can get the complaint reviewed by the Financial Ombdusman Service at no additional cost.

dunstonh

So do we have a claim for mis-sold policy as he was self employed? If so, should the claim ONLY involve the period of time he was self employed or the whole term?

There is no mis-sale based on what you have said so far. That doesnt mean there is or is not. Just not based on what you have said so far.

If the MPPI does not cover the self employed then you have a valid complaint (not a claim as that is something different). If it does cover the self employed then there is no mis-sale complaint.

Even today, MPPI is still recommended and seen as best advice. It hasnt suffered the same way loan and credit card PPI has.

i suggest you contact Skipton and ask them if the MPPI covers the self employed or look at the policy details to see what it says in there.

src007

If you call them they'll tell you, you were ''covered''. So there's no point doing that!

I would certinaly put in a complaint.

Here is a case study from FOS website:

Consumer says he was not told his payment protection policy offered only limited benefits to the self-employed

Mr D had a small shop specialising in interior design. His complaint concerned the single-premium payment protection policy he had been sold when he took out a personal loan. He thought the business concerned should have realised the policy was unsuitable for him, as he was self-employed and therefore entitled to only a limited number of benefits under the policy.
When the business refused to refund all the premiums he had paid, plus interest, Mr D brought his complaint to us.

complaint upheld
We noted that the benefits available to self-employed policyholders were more limited than those available to employees. In particular, the redundancy benefit was only available to policyholders if their employer had ceased trading or had been declared insolvent. We accepted Mr D's view that these terms were likely to make the policy less attractive to someone who was self-employed.

In this particular case, although the business clearly knew that Mr D was self-employed, it had not mentioned that this would limit the benefits he could get under the policy. The business had given him a written summary of the policy benefits. However, we did not consider that this leaflet adequately highlighted the limited cover he would get from the policy.

We concluded that the business had not given Mr D sufficient information to enable him to make an informed choice.

We upheld the complaint. We told the business to put the loan back where it would have been if he had not taken the policy, and to refund all of his payments for the policy, with interest.

magpiecottage

SCR007 may be correct but the case study he cites is for a policy to cover a personal loan, not a mortgage. So it will have had different documentation.

Furthermore, since your home was at risk, there is an argument that the stakes are considerably higher than for a personal loan and therefore a borrower might still choose to accept the restricted cover available.

Therefore, DunstonH is correct in saying we do not have enough information to know.

The Mortgage Code Compliance Board issued Good Practice Notes which say:

"The importance of [MPPI] cannot be ignored. Customers are to be advised of the options available to safeguard their income and mortgage repayments and the advice should take account of and be tailored to their individual circumstances."

src007

Exactly, I said that no one on here can know for sure.

Also, if the stakes are higher this makes it more important that decent cover is provided, so the argument surely works both ways?

dunstonh

Also, if the stakes are higher this makes it more important that decent cover is provided, so the argument surely works both ways?

Problem is that when talking mortgage protection, you have two options. PHI or PPI. For health issues I would go PHI every time. For unemployment issues, you only have PPI. So, its more a case of do nothing and no coverage at all or do something and accept the limitation.

The_Loan_Ranger

dunstonh wrote: »

There is no mis-sale based on what you have said so far. That doesnt mean there is or is not. Just not based on what you have said so far.

If the MPPI does not cover the self employed then you have a valid complaint (not a claim as that is something different). If it does cover the self employed then there is no mis-sale complaint.

Even today, MPPI is still recommended and seen as best advice. It hasnt suffered the same way loan and credit card PPI has.

i suggest you contact Skipton and ask them if the MPPI covers the self employed or look at the policy details to see what it says in there.

I'll wager it will advise that Self-employed people are covered by the policy in the same way that people on PAYE are; they must simply show that they have ceased trading and have registered with the the benefits office to confirm that they are unemployed.

Sad thing is, too many Self- Employed people think they can simply take a few weeks off work and phone an insurance company and get paid for it. we all know it's not as simple as that. If they haven't complied with what's necessary to make a claim for unemployment, the policy won't pay out. This does not mean it's been mis-sold.