Designed to cover monthly repayments on finance if you cannot pay them due to being made unemployed or being unable to work through accident, sickness or illness, if you haven’t got alternative cover, PPI is a good product.

Bringing the bad news is the fact the FSA has found millions of cases where PPI has been mis-sold to customers, the main reason they have found for this is customers are simply not receiving the correct information at the time of being sold the policy. This information breakdown is largely due to staff at finance providers not receiving adequate training.

The FSA however are launching a major crackdown on the way PPI is sold and the training staff must have before able to sell insurance policies. The crackdown is set to revitalise PPI as a product and show customers Payment Protection Insurance is not all bad…..if you need it.

There are of course those who don’t need it and that is half the reason there were cases of mis-sold PPI in the first place.

If you have an employer illness or redundancy cover package, PPI is not the product for you, as your payments are already covered.

If you are self-employed or retired, again PPI is not right for you, as you won’t be able to make a claim. The same goes for if you had a medical problem or existing illness at the time of taking out the policy, you won’t be covered.

PPI is right for some though, if you have no other insurance measures in place to protect your debts, PPI is an ideal product.

The most important thing for customers to remember, is to ensure their debts are covered.

Searching the internet for ways to make cash, I came across the usual ‘get rich quick’ schemes but I very quickly dismissed them. However my search led me to ‘claiming back mis-sold PPI’ and I was intrigued. I wasn’t even that sure what Payment Protection Insurance or PPI was, but I had obtained finance in the last ten years and from what I read there was a good chance I could have been sold it and not even known it!

Speaking to the PPI solicitors, they explained to me that PPI was an insurance policy added to loans, credit cards and other finance, designed to cover payments should I fall ill or become unemployed. I had never been made aware I was purchasing such a policy so I assumed it was not something I had. The PPI solicitors advised me they could still assess whether I had been sold a policy.

The PPI solicitor quickly sent out a claims form to me, which I immediately sent back. After a few days, my PPI solicitor contacted me to say I did have PPI on the loan I took out, so I asked them to proceed with my claim.

The process took a few weeks but my PPI solicitor kept me informed every step of the way. The end result saw my claim become successful and me receiving a refund of just under £2000 of my mis-sold payments!

This is the incorrect sale of Payment Protection Insurance (PPI). PPI is usually sold alongside car loans, homeowner loans, mortgages, credit cards and store cards.

PPI is designed to cover the loan premiums if the customer is not able to keep up with the payments due to redundancy, accident, sickness or injury.

Research by the Financial Services Authority (FSA) has found millions of cases of mis-sold PPI over the last 10 years. The FSA has noted up to 12 reasons that constitute the mis-sale of PPI. The 2 most common are:

• The customer was pressured into purchasing a policy
• The term of the PPI policy was different to the term of the loan, though this wasn’t made clear at the time of purchase