What do you think the banks make the most money out of? Loans? Credit cards or maybe even mortgages? Well you maybe surprised to know that selling PPI insurance is one of their top earning products. Many years ago banks and lenders realised that selling insurance is where the big money is made, not from the credit cards and loans alone as a single entity. If they could sell insurance alongside these products they would make a packet and their profits would go through the roof!
How is the money made by lenders on PPI Insurance – The idea behind insurance is to protect us in time of need, but if truth be told most of us would never need to claim for it and the lenders know this. Its all about averages and clever calculations. There is a vast amount of statistics and data available to lenders which allows them to calculate how likely you are to make a claim on your policy. For example, if a 20 year old decided to take out a health insurance policy, the insurers would know it is very unlikely that they will ever make a claim as most people at this age do not have any health problems. It is the perfect customer to them, they line the insurance companies pockets with cash and very rarely clam it back. This sort of product is very attractive to lenders as they make huge sums of money from it.
And boy do they profit! In June 2008, The Competition Commission published the results of a 15 month investigation into insurance and found the following average payout ratios:
* Car Insurance – 78% * Home insurance – 54% * Mortgage PPI insurance – 28% * Personal Loan PPI insurance – 15% * Credit Card PPI insurance – 11%
So from these figures we can see that for every 100 an insurer takes from a customer in PPI insurance, there is only a 15% they will have to pay out on it. That’s an 85% chance they will never have to pay out to you. So 85 out of every 100 is pure profit for them. It’s even lower with credit cards at 11% (89 out of 100 profit).
PPI insurance favours the broker – Contrary to popular belief, insurance isn’t sold directly to consumers, it’s mainly sold through high street lenders like banks and building societies. Yet it is not the insurers that make the most profit, it is the lenders. When a lender sells you a insurance policy they add a ‘mark up’ to it. The amount of this ‘mark up’ varies between lenders but it has been know for it to be as high a 9 times more than what the insurers charge if you were to go direct to them. Compare the monthly interest on a loan with and without PPI and you will see how much is actually being made by the banks. Usually the PPI costs the same if not more!
Mis selling PPI insurance – When did it become so common? When lenders realised what a money spinner PPI insurance was back in the late 1990s, they started pressuring their staff to sell as many policies as possible. They were given targets to hit and their pay was linked so if they didn’t sell their wages decreased. Some lenders even sacked their staff if targets were not met, whilst other lenders offered huge benefits and incentives to those who could sell the most in a day, week or month.
Customer service staff with no sales experience was forced to sell PPI insurance any way they could to keep their jobs. Bear in mind, until this point the in-depth knowledge needed to ensure a financial product was right for someone and that they understood what was involved lay in the domain of trained and experienced financial advisors. Lenders were muscling in, sending out staff with the most minimal of financial training to sell financial products.
Serious mistakes began to arise and peoples ethics went out of the window in the race for sales and profits. Consumers were being persuaded to take out policies even though they were not suitable for them, and when they came around to reclaim on their policy they found themselves being told, ‘sorry, computer says NO!’. This is one of the main factors why PPI has such a low pay out ratio and has led to a wave of PPI mis selling claims being made.
There’s no doubt PPI insurance is a useful thing to have if your income ever drops because of illness or redundancy, but unfortunately thanks to behaviour of lenders it is doubtful the reputation of PPI insurance will ever recover. It will forever be linked in the minds of us all with the words ‘PPI mis selling’.
If you have PPI there is a good chance it was mis sold to you. Use our PPI calculator to see how much you could reclaim.
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