PPI Commission on old secured loans re: Plevin?

Moneyineptitude wrote: »

My own redress on five loans amounted to £20K, the majority of which was interest, so you can see that you may well have lost out considerably.

Congratulations. A quick tot up would suggest that I could have added a zero to my payout had it all been payable, but I'm not entirely convinced it would have happened that way, so I need to forget about it and not feel like I've lost out. I was happy with it before and I need to stay that way. I looked at the date of the letter and it was a year ago on Friday, so that ship has well and truly sailed.

Moneyineptitude wrote: »

Since Plevin refers solely to undisclosed (not "high") commission charges, I think it's clear that those loans are unlikely to be eligible for a Plevin refund.

I'm not entirely sure that it is that cut and dried. I did a lot of reading last night, including the case summary from Mrs Plevin's case and it repeatedly included phrases like "non-disclosure of the amount of the commissions", "non-disclosure of the amount of the commissions made the relationship unfair", "neither the amount or the recipient of the commission was disclosed".

Mrs Plevin knew there was commision paid from her premiums, her documentation said there was (as do mine), but she had no idea that it was 78.5% of her premium, making the amount she was investing in the insurance aspect to be very small indeed and had she known that, would not have bought the policy: "A reasonable person [...] would be bound to question [...] whether it was a sensible transaction to enter into".

As my loan docs - including the only one of the four that might be valid for consideration by date - do say that any commission paid is kept the bank, I think perhaps it is the non-disclosure of the amount of it that applies, especially as my recent letter from the bank does refer to the "the level of commission received by the Bank was not disclosed to customers during the PPI sale."

If that is the case, it would explain why I've been sent the letter at all. Had the bank known that all their loan paperwork was pre-printed with that phrase about commission, then surely there wouldn't be any case to answer, so the amount not being disclosed must be pertinent. So maybe it is more hopeful than I initially thought.

Was commission front loaded on long-term policies - i.e. they got it all up-front at the start of the policy? Does it pay out based on the value of the premiums for the whole term of the loan (the latest one was 240 months) or for how long you actually paid it for, we settled it just after half way through? Obviously, it's only the amount over the 50% tipping point, I understand that.

My subconscious must have been working on this and a thought popped into my head earlier; with PPI redress settlements, the value of any successful claims during the life of the policy are understandably subtracted from the payment - is this also true with commission settlements?

If it is, then we had a claim in 2005, half way through the life of the only loan I think qualifies and it was certainly a lot greater in value than any potential payout might be, so there wouldn't be anything left, not even enough for an ice cream.

Moneyineptitude wrote: »

Ah, that would perhaps explain why your earlier PPI complaint on five loans did not gain you a large award. If the PPI redress has already been offset against the claim you made on the PPI, then you may well still receive a full Plevin refund.

I'm not sure that fully explains it. The first page of the letter had a table on it listing the 5 loan numbers, the earliest one was shown as upheld, the others were defended. There hadn't been a claim on the first loan, so it showed no deduction for one, but on the mortgage one (that we hadn't wanted refunding and had to reverse in order to retain the policy, which is still active) - that did show a settlement, minus the value of a claim, plus interest.

Our complaint on the loans was that we were not told it was optional - in fact, it was made very clear that they were conditional to securing funds. We weren't complaining on the grounds of lack of need or suitability - in fact, during several telephone interviews (and in writing) I made it clear that we had been happy to have the cover and had claimed on it several times over the years, but we felt we were denied the option to source cover elsewhere, maybe cheaper and with better terms. So I don't think it was that we'd been able to claim that caused the rejection, rather that they were satisfied that the paperwork made it clear the cover was optional, I think the paperwork was of a slightly different format on the earlier loan they did settle making it less clear cut. I only actually found it after the settlement, where I did have the other 4 to hand.

So will the claim in 2005 be deducted from any commission settlement under Plevin, as the claim was probably at least ten-fold any potential commission settlement? In which case you wouldn't think they'd even bother considering it.

Moneyineptitude wrote: »

To which I can only respond....perhaps.

I'd pretty much come to that myself, but wondered if there was a known format, as it's a slightly different beast than a PPI complaint.

I shall go back to forgetting about it until they write again.