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December 9, 2014 
Daniel Lee I would imagine we’ve all received nuisance calls or spam texts from companies claiming to be offering a wide variety of services.
Now, as you read this on the website of a PPI company, you may be wondering why we’re offering our thoughts and advice on the matter, given a huge proportion of these calls are from so-called PPI claim companies.
Well, our reasons are simple. We do not cold call and we never will.
We understand that receiving such calls can be annoying and we don’t wish to be tarnished with the same brush as those companies who give the industry a bad name.
An obvious way to try and stop such calls would be to sign up to the Telephone Preference Service.
Companies should not contact you once you sign up to this.
In reality however, many people continue to received unwanted marketing calls.
So, we’ve come up with two more ways that could put a stop to such calls. It may take a little time, but if a significant number of people follow these steps the calls will eventually stop.
Now, whilst it’s annoying receiving the calls and the tempting thing is to simply hang up, there could be a better way.
Most of the spam marketing calls we receive are from lead providers or marketing companies, and not actually from the processing company who are offering the service.
The marketing company get paid each time they transfer the call through to the processing company who will deal with the matter, whether it be a PPI claim or a pensions review, or any of the other services that are out there.
These are known in the industry as hot-key leads.
So, if you have the patience, stay on the line.
The marketing company will ask you for some details before they transfer the call. Answer the questions, whether you choose to be truthful or not, and wait for the call to be transferred.
The marketing company will often state that they just need to transfer you through to another department. This is a lie!
They are actually transferring you through to the processing company who will pay the marketing company for the lead.
Once the call has been popped through it’s likely to cost the processing company up to £100.
Imagine the spiralling costs if we all just resisted the temptation to hang up.
The calls would soon stop as the setup would not be financially viable.
A large percentage of the population now have smart phones. With smart phones come smart apps!
There are many call recording apps out there and I would urge you all to get one. My reasons are simple.
The regulators are clamping down strongly on breaches of rules and regulations and companies are starting to face fines that have the potential to close them.
However, this is not stopping marketing companies and processing companies from making spurious claims and false representations when speaking with potential customers on the telephone.
By recording the telephone call and forwarding the recording to the regulators you will be helping in the clamp down against these rogue firms.
I’ve recorded a few of these calls myself, and I’ll soon be uploading these and pointing out the things to watch out for, so please feel free to keep an eye out for this in the future.
It’s important to remember that not every company is the same, and that the services on offer, if done correctly, can be hugely beneficial.
We’ll never cold call you, or send you a spammy text or email.
We much prefer it when our customers come and find us, or recommend friends and family.
So, please feel free to have a look around the site to see what we do.
If you have any questions our experts are on hand to answer them via telephone, email or our live chat facility.
Let’s all start the fight back against nuisance calls!
Stop nuisance calls
August 11, 2015 Daniel Lee It probably goes without saying that the quality of a PPI claim letter is a major factor as to whether a PPI claim is accepted or rejected by a lender.
Forming a strong and coherent case based on fact must form the basis of the PPI claim letter.
Furthermore, a strong understanding of the rules and responsibilities that lenders had to abide by is of paramount importance.
Lenders had to adhere to strict guidelines when selling insurance products.
These were set out by their regulator, the Financial Services Authority (FSA), now known as the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA).
These rules were called Insurance: Conduct Of Business (ICOB), and it is these rules that the validity of a PPI claim will centre around.
Lenders were ordered to stop selling PPI on credit agreements in 2010, so if you’ve taken out a mortgage, loan, credit card etc since this time, you will not have been sold PPI.
If you took out credit prior to 2010 then your agreement could well be one of the 34 million that had PPI added to it.
If you have the paperwork then you should be able to see whether you’ve had PPI.
But what if you no longer have paperwork? What if you don’t remember your account numbers?
In these instances you could launch a Data Subject Access Request to your lender in order to see if they hold any records of your agreement.
As mentioned above, a good understanding of ICOB will allow you to build a clear and concise case within a PPI claim letter.
However, there are a few basics that would form part of the argument as to whether you may qualify for PPI compensation.
We’ve created a quick basic guide here which should give you an idea as to whether you may have a case.
One thing that must be remembered is that banks and lenders do not want to pay out compensation, and they will adopt various tactics in order to wriggle out of paying.
Lenders have rejected millions of complaints, with a majority of the rejections being unfair.
The simple reason why they reject valid complaints is that people, even now, accept letters of rejection.
Do not take no for an answer. There are two options when you receive a rejection letter.
The FOS is an independent body set up to handle disputes between lenders and consumers that cannot be resolved between them.
The FOS will investigate the case using the points made in the PPI claim letter, and evidence supplied by you and your lender.
Whilst the waiting time for the FOS to make a decision can be anywhere between 12-24 months, the wait is usually worth it as the FOS overturn the majority of rejections.
We hope the guide above gives you an idea of what is required in order to build a solid case, and PPI claim letter.
However, if you don’t have the time or the patience, or you’d rather the process be stress free, you could always instruct experts to act on your behalf.
Your Money Claim has years of experience in dealing with lenders and their tactics.
Your Money Claim will carry out the necessary checks using a fast-track system set up with almost all lenders, to see whether you’ve had PPI.
If you have been sold PPI, Your Money Claim will build your case using expert knowledge and will then deal with your lender on your behalf at every step of the process.
Your Money Claim will counter arguments and obstacles that your lender may raise, and deal with the FOS is required.
Your Money Claim is used to beating the banks, and having already claimed tens of millions in compensation for it’s customers, it has a fearsome reputation with lenders.
So why not start your claim today with the experts, and take the hassle out of your PPI claim.
PPI claim letter
November 27, 2014 Daniel Lee We regularly hear them being mentioned as one of the big four UK banks alongside Barclays, HSBC and Royal Bank of Scotland, but who are the Lloyds Banking Group?
Well, as is probably obvious by the name, it’s a group of banks under one company. So let’s open the door and see who’s inside…
The obvious one. Lloyds in the major player in the group, and having been around since 1765, it’s also one of the oldest banks in the UK.
In 1995 Lloyds merged with TSB to form Lloyds TSB.
They remained as such until separation in late 2013, which was as a consequence of the government bailout of the troubled bank during the height of the financial crisis.
Black Horse is a specialist division of the Lloyds Banking Group, having previously been part of Lloyds TSB.
Black Horse provides motor, retail and asset finance to hundreds of thousands of customers every year.
Halifax was founded in 1853, perhaps unsurprisingly in the town of Halifax in West Yorkshire.
Bank of Scotland, the second oldest bank in the UK behind the Bank of England, started life way back in 1695.
The two historical banking giants merged in 2001 to form Halifax Bank of Scotland, which was subsequently shortened and known thereafter as HBOS.
In joining forces HBOS became the biggest provider of mortgages in the UK overnight.
iN 2008 Lloyds TSB Group made a takeover bid of HBOS, which was eventually completed in early 2009, heralding the start of the ‘Lloyds Banking Group’.
Perhaps the biggest black mark on the Lloyds Banking Group card is the huge PPI mis-selling scandal.
The group is responsible for for over 40% of PPI policies sold, which is around 13.6 million of the 34 million policies sold.
The total poundage worth of PPI policies sold by Lloyds Banking Group is around £20 BILLION.
Having set aside £11.3 billion of the total £27 billion to compensate customers who’ve been mis-sold PPI, at the time of writing this, we can be sure there will, and should be future additions to this number.
Whilst there have been many other scandals we could go into, such as rigging the foreign exchange, rigging gold and metal prices, rigging LIBOR, we’re just going to look at one final one a little closer to everyones pockets.
The next mis-selling scandal, which is almost upon us, is the Packaged Bank Account scandal.
With an estimated 10 million active Packaged Bank Accounts in the UK, and millions more that are closed, but can still be claimed against, this next scandal has the potential to be huge.
Much the same as PPI, Packaged Bank Accounts were sold to meet the needs (profit targets) of the banks, and not to suit the needs or wants of the customer.
Millions of customers have had their bank accounts ‘upgraded’ to include a monthly fee in exchange for insurance products.
Millions more were offered the bank account, and not offered a free alternative.
Not sure whether you’ve been sold PPI? Our fast and comprehensive checking systems that have been set up with almost all banks, allows you to find out whether you’ve been one of the millions who have had PPI.
Not sure whether you qualify for PPI compensation? Check here to see whether you may.
Want to know how much you may be owed? Why not try our PPI calculator.
Do you pay a monthly fee fore your bank account? Check here to see whether you may qualify for compensation.
#1: The first option for you is to fill in the form which can be seen on every page. By doing so, we will send you out a form in the post for you to complete. Once we’ve received the form back in the freepost envelope we send you with your form, we can make a start on your claim.
#2: The second option for you is to download our form, which again can be found on every page by clicking the ‘download pack’ button. Simply print it out, complete it and send it back to us, our address can be found here. Once we receive is back we’ll let you know and make a start.
Our team of experts are on hand to answer any questions you have via telephone, email or our live chat facility.
So….why wait, let’s get started!
Lloyds Banking Group
November 25, 2014 Daniel Lee We recently brought you news that the owner of Clydesdale Bank, and Yorkshire Bank, was looking to sell the two and leave the UK market.
This has been on the back of numerous scandals that the owner of the banks, the National Australia Bank (NAB), believes has become too much.
It’s clear from recent announcements that the bad names of Clydesdale and Yorkshire are having an unwanted affect on NAB.
If you add to this the fines and compensation that has had to be paid, which has seriously affected NAB’s accounts, it’s little wonder why they want to wash their hands of the dirty pair.
News that not all was well inside Clydesdale Bank and Yorkshire Bank came last year.
The Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) and the Information Commissioners Office (ICO) discovered that the banks were attempting to destroy customer records in order to try and avoid having to investigate PPI complaints.
Just prior to that incident, in September, Clydesdale Bank were fined £8.9 million for failing to treat it’s mortgage customers fairly.
This year, the beleaguered pair have faced a huge uplift in the amount of PPI compensation it has had to set aside, having been found guilty of handling complaints unfairly.
In the space of just three months, Clydesdale and Yorkshire increased their PPI compensation pot by £75 million, followed by a huge addition of £425 million.
This took the overall PPI compensation bill for the two, to £1.2 BILLION. Perhaps the most concerning part of the announcement regarding the increase in money set aside, was that they only expected the amounts to see them through the current financial year.
Surely, after so much controversy and scandal, the top bosses would find themselves lucky to be in a job, never mind expecting to receive any form of bonus.
David Thorburn, the Chief Executive of Clydesdale Bank, clearly has some questions to answer given the above.
However, it would appear that Mr Thorburn’s salary of £455,000 wasn’t reward enough for the scandals and treatment of it’s customers, so the bank has decided to give him a sweetener.
Clydesdale Bank offered Mr Thorburn the following additional extras due to the sterling job he’d carried out!
So, when we add these bonuses to the salary, Mr Thorburn has walked away with £955,000.
Not bad really when you consider he’s basically failed in his duties.
In any other industry bonuses are paid based on performance, and the success of the business.
How banking has been able to get away with these nonsensical bonus structures and systems for so long is draining trust levels.
They’ll have us all believe that in order to attract the best people to run the banks, we have to offer such incentive laden contracts.
Well I’m sorry but the people who have been running our financial industry for the past few decades have FAILED, driven by the greed of shareholders and themselves.
If changing the bonus culture, wherein failure is rewarded, means that the positions are no longer attractive to these people, then that can only be a positive outcome.
I’m all for rewarding performance, as I think most of us are, but what is happening in the banking sector is far from a culture of rewarding performance.
Surely performance indicators would be customer service satisfaction levels, numbers of new customers and businesses, exemplary regulatory standards, as well as long term and sustainable profits.
Will the revolution happen? I wouldn’t count on it unfortunately.
Clydesdale Bank boss
June 29, 2017 Daniel Lee Everybody has heard about the PPI mis-selling scandal haven’t they?
If you haven’t, where have you been?
Whilst the vast majority of us have heard of PPI, how many actually know what it is, how it was mis-sold, and the reasons it was mis-sold?
If you’d like to brush up on the whole PPI story, and get the above questions answered, we’ve gone into greater detail on our PPI page, which you can reach here.
In this post, we’re going to take a look at the PPI fines that have been handed out, who to, and what for.
Firstly, we need to establish that the fines handed out are not included in the compensation payments that banks and lenders have paid out, and put aside.
With the main banks (Lloyds, Barclays, HSBC, RBS / Natwest), having set aside billions to compensate customers, and the bill rising consistently, we investigate whether the sector has been discouraged by the fines and compensation or whether the profits still outweigh the costs.
5th September 2006: The Financial Services Authority (FSA) fined Regency Mortgage Corporation £56,000 for failures in it’s mortgage PPI sales techniques.
26th October 2006: A fine of £455,000 is handed to loans.co.uk, a broker for telephone PPI sales failures, affecting over 44,000 customers.
20th December 2006: The FSA fined home shopping company, Redcats, £270,000 for PPI selling failures which could have affected up to 160,000 of it’s customers.
15th February 2007: Capital One were given a fine of £175,000 for failing to provide 50,000 customers important information following a PPI sale. The culture of selling PPI within Capital One could have affected up to 335,000 customers.
6th September 2007: Hadenglen Home Finance were issued with a £133,332 fine, and it’s Chief Executive, Richard Hayes, was fined £49,000, in the first instance that a fine had been handed to both the company, and it’s CEO. Quite astonishingly, Mr Hayes has still been allowed, and continues to be involved in various companies that sell mortgage and insurance products.
16th January 2008: The biggest fine at the time, £1,085,000 was given to HFC Bank, part of the HSBC group, for serious failings in it’s PPI sales.
12th May 2008: The FSA gave Land of Leather a £210,000 fine and also slapped it’s Cheif Executive, Paul Briant, with a £14,000 fine. Including Land of Leather, Mr Briant has been part of 28 companies that have been dissolved!
30th July 2008: Liverpool Victoria, now commonly known as LV=, were hit with a £840,000 fine for non-compliant PPI sales carried out over the telephone. Of the 90 calls listened to by the regulator, it found over 60% were not compliant. It also found that pressure tactics were used, and that the cost and product explanation were not carried out satisfactorily.
21st August 2008: In one hit, the FSA fined five car dealerships that exposed 2,175 customers to risk of purchasing unsuitable PPI policies. The dealerships were GK Group Limited, George White Motors Ltd, Ringway Garages (Leeds) Limited, Ringways Garages (Doncaster) Limited and Park’s of Hamilton (Holdings) Limited. Together they received a fine of over£175,000.
7th October 2008: A £7,000,000 fine, the biggest handed out at the time, was given to Alliance & Leicester, for serious failings in it’s telephone PPI sales which affected up to 210,000 customers.
10th December 2008: Egg Banking faced a fine of £721,000 due to it’s tactics when selling credit card PPI. Egg credit cards have since been taken over, and rebranded, by Barclaycard.
9th July 2010: David Head, a director of Essex based mortgage and insurance broker, FT Compliance Services Ltd, was issued with a £10,500 fine for failing to properly supervise insurance brokers. Mr Head is still involved in the finance industry as is currently a director of a financial advisory firm!
3rd May 2012: UK Car Group Limited were hit with a £91,000 fine for the failings of it’s representative, CC Automative Ltd, trading as Carcraft. Indeed, Carcraft’s own internal audits raised concerns, but it appears they were simply not acted upon.
12th December 2012: Three directors, Christopher Ollerenshaw, Thomas Reeh and Adrian Childs were each given fines of £100,000 (Ollerenshaw), £75,000 (Reeh) and £50,000 (Childs). Ollerenshaw and Reeh eventually paid £50,000 and £10,000 following claims of financial hardship, whilst Childs got away with not paying anything after declaring himself bankrupt previously.
4th January 2013: The Co-operative Bank are next up, with a £113,300 fine due to not handling PPI complaints fairly.
19th February 2013: Lloyds Banking Group, which includes Halifax, Bank of Scotland, Blackhorse, and Lloyds, were issued with a £4,315,000 fine for delaying PPI compensation payments to customers.
11th December 2013: It’s the Lloyds Banking Group again! This time, a £28,038,800 fine due to serious failings in the controls and incentive schemes given to staff for selling various products, including protection insurance, thus encouraging a culture of mis-selling.
16th April 2015: The biggest PPI fine at the time, £20,678,300 is handed to Clydesdale Bank who, along with it’s sister company, Yorkshire Bank, failed to handle complaints fairly, failed to take into account all evidence, manipulated documentation in an attempt to show no PPI had been added when in fact it had. Perhaps the most alarming of all, the bank was found to have provided false information to the Financial Ombudsman Service.
5th June 2015: The record PPI fine at almost £100m higher that the previous, the Lloyds Banking Group are hit with a £117,430,600 fine for mis-handling valid PPI complaints. The bank, which includes Lloyds, Halifax, Bank of Scotland and Blackhorse are ordered to reopen and uphold 1.2m complaints which was estimated to cost the group an extra £710m. Complaint handling staff were advised that the group had not mis-sold PPI and told to reject complaints unless specifically told otherwise!
1st June 2016: CT Capital are fined £2,360,900 for failing to handle thousands of complaints fairly. CT Capital had a policy of automatically rejecting claims against credit agreements taken out over six years prior to the claim, and rejected claims even when the recorded call from the sale of the policy was considered to be non-compliant.
In total to date, the regulators have dished out fines of £184,432,400 for PPI and PPI related offences.
You may be thinking that such fines would be a deterrent to the industry?
However, even if you add the almost £185 million to the £39 billion compensation that banks and lenders have set aside to compensate customers, it doesn’t come close to the profits that were generated during the mis-selling scandal.
With 34 MILLION policies sold since 2001, worth £50 BILLION, that’s almost a £11 BILLION profit for the banks after paying out compensation and fines.
It is important to remember that this figure doesn’t take into account policies sold prior to 2001, or the profits generate via interest charged on the PPI premiums.
Not a bad result for the banks really is it when you consider they’ve still walked away with billions in their pockets, hardly a deterrent for future scandals?
PPI was sold on all forms of credit, such as mortgages, loans, car finance, hire purchase agreements, credit cards and store cards.
Not sure whether you’ve been sold PPI?
Our fast and comprehensive checking systems that have been set up with almost all banks allows us to find out whether you’ve been one of the millions who have had PPI.
Not sure whether you qualify? Check here to see whether you may.
Want to know how much you may be owed? Why not try our PPI calculator.
Option #1: Fill in the ‘Start Your Claim’ form on this page. We’ll send you out a form in the post for you to complete. Once we’ve received the form back in the freepost envelope we provide, we’ll make a start on your PPI claim.
Option #2: Click the ‘Download Claim Pack’ button. Simply print out the form, complete it and send it back to us. Our address and email address can be found here.
Our experts are on hand to answer any questions you have via telephone, email or our live chat facility.
PPI fines
August 11, 2015 Daniel Lee With over £16.6 billion already paid out to UK consumers who’ve made a claim for the mis-selling of PPI, and the banks continuing to add to the compensation pot, we’ve done a little bit of number crunching.
As mentioned in a previous post, it’s looking increasingly likely the the PPI saga still has at least three years left to run.
In the majority of enquiries we now receive, we are speaking with customers who are not sure whether they’ve had PPI.
Thankfully, we are able to carry out the necessary checks via fast-track systems with almost all lenders, and in the majority of instances we are finding that the people who weren’t sure whether they have had PPI, have indeed had it.
We recently investigated just how many people have yet to come forward to make a PPI, and the number is staggering.
Our statistics show that up to 7 million people have yet to make a claim.
The major reason behind this number being so high is due to the tactics used by lenders whereby PPI was added to loans, mortgages, credit cards etc without the knowledge of the customer.
With the total compensation bill of the major banks (Lloyds Banking Group, RBS/ Natwest, HSBC, Barclays and Santander) standing at over £22 BILLION, with over £3 BILLION being added by other lenders, the bill currently stands at £25.5 BILLION.
As of August 2014, £16.6 BILLION of this had been paid out, leaving £8.9 BILLION sat waiting to be paid out.
However, with the banks continuing to add to their bills on a quarterly basis, it would appear the final bill will be around the £30 BILLION mark, thus leaving closer to £13.4 BILLION to be claimed.
The average payout is £3,332** with the biggest payout being over £100,000!
With a final bill of £30 BILLION, this means the average UK adult would get £600.
Whilst not everybody is entitled, it does give an indication as to the scale of the scandal.
If you have had a loan, mortgage, credit card or any other form of credit within the last 25 years there’s every chance you’ll have been paying for PPI.
We’ve made claiming easy, taking the stress out of you having to deal with the paperwork, the stress, and the tactics employed by the bank to try and wriggle out of paying.
So….how do you start your claim?
#1: The first option for you is to fill in the form which can be seen on every page. By doing so, we will send you out a form in the post for you to complete. Once we’ve received the form back in the freepost envelope we send you with your form, we can make a start on your PPI claim.
#2: The second option for you is to download our form, which again can be found on every page by clicking the ‘download pack’ button. Simply print it out, complete it and send it back to us, our address can be found here. Once we receive is back we’ll let you know and make a start.
Our team of experts are on hand to answer any questions you have via telephone, email or our live chat facility.
So….why wait, let’s get started!
Average UK adult
