In her blog back in May, Emily Puddifer raised the moral question: "If you took out PPI aware of the terms of the policy, would you complain anyway, knowing that you could receive compensation?"
And here we are in November, six months on and PPI is still claiming headlines. Provision for PPI pay outs by Barclays, Lloyds, RBS and HSBC have reached £10bn, for those government backed banks these are provisions that could have otherwise been paid back to the tax payer. It is clear the PPI redress situation has turned out far worse than the government, regulators, customers and the industry anticipated.
There is no doubt in anyone's mind that the 'mis-selling' of payment protection insurance to customers is plain wrong and that banks must, if they haven't already, put safeguards in place to prevent future such scandals.
However as PPI provision alone has caused such a severe impact on the performance and recovery of the banking industry, do we as customers need to reflect on our part in this 'disaster'? Should we take more responsibility when purchasing financial products?
All too often people happily sign away without having read or fully understood the terms and conditions. I recently received a letter from my mobile phone provider alerting me to the increase in its monthly tariffs, when I rang to complain I was told it was all included in the small print, which it was. There is no regulation to protect me in this instance as I willingly signed the contract fully aware but having not understood what I was signing up for. It may take some time to read through the details but there is really no excuse to be so cavalier when putting pen to paper.
The time has come to take personal responsibility. When making any purchase of a financial product customers should make every endeavour to fully understand what it is they are purchasing. Not only will this benefit customers as whole but move the industry back on to the right path and those government backed banks away from tax payers support.
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