So the Competition Commission has finally confirmed what campaigners have been saying for a long time: PPI is a massive rip-off. Few could have expected today's judgment to be quite so damning, though. Companies selling Personal Protection Insurance sold with loans, credit cards and mortgages, "face little or no competition". The commission reckons the public is being overcharged by £1.4bn a year - about a third of annual premiums. Can you think of another market where the rip-off is quite that bad?
The Competition Commission goes so far as to suggest PPI prices should be capped while its root and branch reforms take effect. The inquiry chairman Peter Davis summed it up like this: "We've found serious problems with the PPI market and customers are paying for the lack of competition. The way PPI is sold as an 'add-on' to a loan or other credit product means distributors escape the pressure they should face from competing suppliers. Distributors don't appear to compete much with each other on either price or quality of PPI; neither do they appear to do much direct advertising of PPI to win customers from each other."
If you've got PPI you may have a claim for compensation. Because of rampant misselling, though, you may not even realise you have a policy. And to follow through with a claim go to MoneySavingExpert.com or Which?
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