Commitment to help consumers agreed at PPI summit

Representatives from all the major banks and credit card providers, regulators and the Financial Ombudsman Service have today pledged action to help make Payment Protection Insurance (PPI) claims easier and prove that you don’t need to use a  Claims Management Company (CMC).

MoneySavingExpert.com and Which? hosted the PPI Summit to increase awareness of how easy it is for consumers to reclaim mis-sold PPI for free and to tackle head on the unscrupulous CMCs who exploit consumers wanting to claim back their money.

The aim was to get all parties working together to help people get back the money they are owed and help restore trust in the PPI claims process.

Today action was pledged at the PPI Summit to:

  • standardise complaints procedures across financial services providers to make the process clearer and simpler for consumers with insight from Which? and MoneySavingExpert.com;
  • agree to work together to improve communication with customers to explain why you don’t need to use a CMC;
  • and for MoneySavingExpert.com, Which?, the financial services providers and the regulators to write to the Justice Secretary Ken Clarke to call for tougher regulation of CMCs

All parties present also committed to continue to work together to take forward further work in this area.

MoneySavingExpert.com’s Martin Lewis said:

“I’m delighted we made real progress today to tackle the information deficit that has left claims companies wrongly persuading a nation you need pay to reclaim. Yet until there’s hardcore regulation of this billion pound industry to stop their false claims, and gives redress when things go wrong, even this new bank/consumer alliance will find it tough.

“When the banks, consumer groups and Ombudsman all sit round the table and say ‘something needs to be done’ – you know there’s a problem. Of the £5bn still to be paid out unless we act up to £1.5bn of it could go to claims companies. This summit should’ve been called by government, it wasn’t – so Which? and MoneySavingExpert.com took it into our own hands.”

Which? executive director, Richard Lloyd said:

“It is a big step forward to have representatives of all the major banks and the regulators around the table today and it is encouraging that action has been agreed to help people get back the £5bn of mis-sold payment protection still available.

“But today is just the start. We will continue to work with everyone present but the Government must also now up its game and speed up its plans to tighten up regulation of unscrupulous CMCs who are exploiting consumers who just want to claim back what is rightfully theirs.”

Eric Leenders, Executive Director, British Bankers Association said:

“We are committed to work with consumer groups to make sure all customer complaints are fairly heard.”

Chief Executive of the Financial Ombudsman Service, Natalie Ceeney CBE said:

“Consumers don’t need to use a third party to complain about PPI. They will get the same outcome, just as quickly, if they do it themselves and get to keep all of their compensation.”

Notes to Editor

1. Attendee list for the PPI Summit available upon request.
2. An audio file of the advert to raise public awareness on reclaiming PPI is available for download from www.moneysavingexpert.com/ppiadvert
3. MoneySavingExpert.com and Which? both have free on-line resources to help people reclaim mis-sold PPI: www.moneysavingexpert.com/ppi or www.which.co.uk/ppi
4. Both Martin Lewis, Moneysavingexpert.com and Richard Lloyd, executive director of Which?, are available for interview.

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