PPI claim

disneystar

I have put in a Claim with Santander for PPI l am still paying on a mortgage l took out with Alliance and Leicester approx 10 years ago, It has been 18 weeks since the original claim went in after 8 weeks l had the letter saying they needed longer, when l checked after 10 weeks they could not find my mortgage number, this l gave them, but to date they keep telling over the phone the is still no news, What should l do they seem to be messing me around ?. Also my husband feels nervous about cancelling this insurance in case he needs it l want to cancel it as money is tight, also l am off sick and people are telling me to put a claim in but surely this would affect my claim with the bank? my apologies this is a long one but really dont know what to do?

DevCoder

What is your reason for mis-selling? MPPI is one of the leats upheld claims

Sounds like you are in the exact position at the moment to use the MPPI and your husband is right, it affords protection over potentially losing your home (which is why many mortgage providers made it mandatory).

dunstonh

Also my husband feels nervous about cancelling this insurance in case he needs it

So why the heck are you putting in a mis-sale complaint?

also l am off sick and people are telling me to put a claim in but surely this would affect my claim with the bank?

Claim is what you do when you suffer a claimable event.
Complaint is what you do when you wish to complain about something. You have put in a complaint alleging a wrongdoing. If the complaint is successful, they will cancel and void the policy back to commencement and you will not be able to claim on it.

You seem to be complaining about something you need. What actually was your complaint?

disneystar

thanks for the replies but l dont think they will pay out as l had and still have a pre existing medical condition that is why l am off sick and l only owe a couple of thousand on my morgage, so l dont know why l am paying for an item that they wont pay out on. We were mis sold because the alliance and leciester never asked any medical questions so the insurance would never pay out anyway,everything was done over the phone in about 30 mins

dunstonh

We were mis sold because the alliance and leciester never asked any medical questions so the insurance would never pay out anyway

How do you know it wont pay out?
Pre-existing conditions only prevent claims on pre-existing conditions and related conditions. It does not prevent claims on unrelated conditions. In most cases complaints on pre-existing conditions are rejected as they are not severe enough to invalidate the policy sufficiently. If your pre-existing medical condition is severe enough to invalidate the policy then you have good grounds for complaint.

Here is a case from issue 104 of the FOS publications showing real complaints and outcomes. It isnt the same but it gives an indication of the thought process.

104/1
consumer complains she was not made aware that her medical condition was excluded under her PPI policy

When Mrs C took out a loan secured on her home, the loan provider recommended that she take out a single-premium payment protection insurance (PPI) policy.

Although she had not needed to make a claim under the policy, Mrs C became concerned about it when a friend told her about a PPI claim he had made – which had been declined because of a so-called “pre-existing medical condition”. Mrs C was worried that because she had suffered from asthma for many years, she would not be able to claim if her condition led to her taking time off work.

So she complained to her loan provider about the way the PPI policy had been sold to her – saying she had not been made aware of the exclusions that applied to it.

Mrs C’s loan provider rejected her complaint, and she decided to refer her case to us.

complaint not upheld
We listened to a recording of the phone conversation between Mrs C and a call handler at the loan provider. We noted that Mrs C engaged fully with the call handler during the conversation – and often asked him to clarify things she was unsure about.

When she was asked about her medical history, Mrs C told the call handler that she had asthma. When he went on to explain the exclusions that applied to the policy, he referred to her condition specifically – pointing out that any claim relating to her asthma would be excluded. Mrs C replied that she was not worried about this because her asthma was “under control” – and had never caused her to take time off work. So we were satisfied that she had been aware of the significance of the exclusion when she took out the policy.

But given that the business had specifically recommended the policy to Mrs C, we also needed to consider whether this exclusion made the policy unsuitable for Mrs C. We concluded that it did not. After all, she had said she thought it unlikely that her asthma would cause her to make a claim and the policy would have covered her for any new medical condition. So we decided that the potential benefits of the policy, given Mrs C’s circumstances, meant that it had been a reasonable recommendation.

Having looked at the evidence, we were satisfied that the loan provider had acted appropriately in recommending the policy – and that Mrs C had made an informed decision when she took it out.

We did not uphold the complaint.


here is another in relation to mortgages (and indicates why MPPI has lower success than other types of PPI)

104/10
consumer complains she was advised to take out unnecessary PPI policy on her mortgage
Mrs A wanted to make some extensive improvements to her home. She thought about different ways of borrowing the money she needed, and decided to look into changing her mortgage. She went into the local branch of her building society to discuss her requirements. Following a discussion with an adviser, she took out a new mortgage – and a regular-premium PPI policy, payable on a monthly basis.

Mrs A later complained to the building society that she did not need the policy and should not have been advised to take it out. When the building society rejected her complaint, she referred the matter to us.

complaint not upheld
To get to the bottom of what had happened, we asked Mrs A to tell us how exactly she had reached her decision to take the policy out. We also spoke to the building society. Having listened to both accounts, we decided that Mrs A had been given advice by the building society. So we needed to decide whether this advice had been appropriate for her.

When we looked at the policy documents she had been given, we noted that they set out the cost of the policy separately from the mortgage repayments. And under the terms of the policy, Mrs A’s monthly mortgage repayments would have been made in full had she ever found herself unable to work or made redundant.

Mrs A told us that when she had taken the policy out, she had been the main wage earner in her household, with two dependants. Although she had been in good health and in full-time employment, she had only been entitled to statutory sick pay. And she had no other insurance policies or savings that she could have drawn on to make her mortgage repayments if she had found herself unable to work.

In light of these circumstances, we decided that it had been reasonable for the building society to recommend the policy to Mrs A. After all, she was taking on a substantial financial commitment – and if she had defaulted on that commitment, she would have risked losing her home.