Martin Lewis is urging people who took out payment protection insurance (PPI) between 1990 and 2011 to see if they can claim back thousands.
On the Martin Lewis Money Show, the personal finance expert warned against the “biggest financial scam” costing billions of pounds.
PPI was often sold with credit cards, high street store cards, mortgages, home improvement loans, business loans and student loans.
It was designed to cover one’s repayments for a time if they couldn’t pay yourself. For example, if someone was made redundant, or if they couldn’t work due to an accident, illness, disability or death.
Around 65 million policies were taken out – mostly between 1990 and 2011 – though the product was widely mis-sold.
Mr Lewis explained that as a result, between 2011 and 2019, banks repaid customers more than £38 billion in compensation for mis-sold PPI. The deadline to claim was August 29, 2019.
After this date, the door to claiming this extra cash was shut with billions of pounds still unclaimed.
But there is still hope for those who didnt claim alone as legal firm Harcus Parker is attempting to launch a new group legal claim – on a no win, no fee basis.
Their aim is to recoup £18 billion in PPI premiums it believes are owed to six million people.
Harcus Parker says successful claims could be worth between £2,500 and £3,000 on average.
This is how much claimants would receive, as this estimate already takes into account Harcus Parker’s fee which is about 35 percent.
However, some claims could result in much higher payouts than this – and of course some will be worth less too.
Mr Lewis suggested that as this process is so complicated, going through the law firm is “the best way to do this”.
A fan wrote in to the show to thank Mr Lewis about the campanigning he did years ago to raise awareness about claiming back PPI before the deadline.
Edward wrote in and said: “Thank you for the information about PPI Tax refund. I filled in the R40 form and I got my tax refund of £2616,50.”