Can you make a PPI claim again?

The recent lawsuit has adapted the original payment protection insurance (PPI) deadline to make a claim, which ended in 2019.

PPI is an insurance product that was sold alongside credit cards, loans and other financial agreements in case you were unable to make payments. However, in a large number of cases, it was mis-sold.

This enabled consumers to claim back their mis-sold PPI payments, but the deadline for that was August 2019.

The original time limit for making a court claim was six years from when the PPI policy ended. However, a new ruling means you now have six years from the end of your underlying credit agreement, such as your credit card or loan.

Read on to understand how this change could affect you.

How to make a claim

It’s still the case that you can only make a claim directly to your lender or through the Financial Ombudsman in exceptional circumstances, such as serious illness or a technical issue that prevented you from making a claim before the August 2019 deadline. 

If you don’t have exceptional circumstances, you could make a claim via the county courts. However, this will likely involve more money and time than it’s worth due to how complex the law is in this area.

Alternatively, you could work with a solicitor on a no-win no-fee basis, where they take a cut of whatever you claim back. Check which law firms and solicitors are regulated by the Solicitors Regulation Authority.

Note that if you've known about your right to make a PPI claim for a long time but chose not to take any action during that time, the court would be unlikely to make an order in your favour, despite the extended timeline.

You could also consider joining a collective legislative claim, also known as a 'group action' or 'class action' claim. Legal firm Harcus Parker currently has a collective proceedings claim on mis-sold PPI, which concerns high levels of secret commission, known as Plevin. 

Are you eligible to make a claim?

To make a claim, you must have been sold PPI with a financial product, and you were mis-sold if:

• the PPI was optional and this wasn’t made clear to you
• you weren’t told about any significant exclusions under the policy
• it wasn’t clear that you would have to pay for the insurance upfront in one single payment
• you had to pay for the PPI as a single payment and it wasn’t clear that the insurance cost would be added to the loan, and that you would be paying interest on it
• your loan or finance agreement lasted longer than the PPI, and it wasn’t clear that the insurance would run out before you had finished paying for your loan or finance agreement. You should have been told that you would continue to pay interest on the insurance premium, even after the insurance expired
• you bought PPI after 14 January 2005 and weren’t given a ‘demands and needs statement’ to show why a particular policy had been recommended.

Beware of claims management companies

In the run-up to the Supreme Court ruling, Which? has seen various claims management companies working with marketing brands to send texts that address you personally and claim you are owed thousands of pounds in PPI.

These texts typically come from a ‘refunds’ company. One of the texts we’ve seen says: ‘Your refund of up to £5389 is un-claimed. Tax was taken from past PPI/Loans and is owed back.’ It then directs you to a website asking for your personal details.

While these companies might be able to help you make a claim, some of them can take massive cuts from what you get back, while others could just be dodgy and looking to phish for your personal data.

Some people have claimed these companies have collected tax refunds on their behalf without prior contact with the claims management company.

You should always check the Financial Conduct Authority’s register to see if a firm is registered before using it to make a PPI claim, and read the company’s terms and conditions thoroughly.