Here's what the media have to say...

Time Online

11th June 2009

The consumer group Which? first highlighted the problems associated with PPI a decade ago. Yet when it carried out a mystery shopping exercise in 2007, it found that consumers were still being "duped" into buying the cover.

It said that people were at risk of unknowingly purchasing the cover because staff at some providers added PPI during the sales process as a matter of course.

The Sun

29th May 2009

A DEBT-RIDDEN couple have been awarded more than £27,000 compensation after being flogged near useless insurance - by a company who used ex-Countdown boffin Carol Vorderman to push its services.

In one of the biggest mis-selling cases in the UK, lenders Firstplus were forced to agree to the landmark decision of the Financial Ombudsman after their unscrupulous sales tactics were revealed.

The middle-aged couple from Suffolk took out a £100,000 consolidation loan but were tricked into forking out repayments for an additional £25,000 plus interest for Payment Protection Insurance - even though PPI is optional cover.

The Mirror

22nd July 2009

The past few months has seen a sharp increase in people who say the cost of PPI, or the lack of a payout, has tipped them over the edge financially.

The Independent

17th March 2009

Not since the personal pension debacle of the early 1990s has there been such a systematic attempt to mislead and mis-sell to consumers. What a shame that it is the financial services industry that is once again at fault.

It is rapidly becoming clear that payment protection insurance (PPI) is the latest mega-scandal to have been perpetrated on unwitting consumers by greedy commission-driven salesmen working for banks and insurers, among others. The Independent has repeatedly highlighted the scams going on in the PPI market, but the true scale of mis-selling is unprecedented.

BBC

29th May 2009

The sale of PPI has been highly profitable, partly because so few customers have been able to make valid claims.

The Commission found that in 2006, lenders made excess profits of £1.4bn when selling the insurance.

Consumer organisations have found that borrowers are often also under the impression that taking the insurance is essential in order to be granted the loan at all.

And some customers have been misled about what the insurance covers, whether they really need it, or if they will even be able to make a claim under the terms of their policy.

Investigations into mis-selling of PPI have prompted a series of heavy fines being handed out.

In October 2008, the FSA fined the Alliance & Leicester £7m for mis-selling PPI to 210,000 people. The FSA said the bank had trained its staff to pressurise any customers who disputed the inclusion of the supposedly optional insurance in the quotation for their loan.