Thread: Ocean/FirstPlus - can you help?

My question might be a straight forward one but I need some advice.
I took a loan from Ocean Finance in Jan 2002 for £20k which was for debt consolidation. I paid this off in May 2004 when I remortgaged my house but I can recall the settlement figure I got from them being massively over what I had calculted.

Anyway I paid it off and got on with my life.

Then 5 years later, I found the CAG forums and found out about PPI mis-selling so I wrote to Ocean with a SAR and I gets a bunch of stuff back which is all blacked out and hard to read but I apparently voluntarly bought some PPI with my £20k loan for the sum of £3986!!!!!

I am now sending them a PPI letter and wondered, is the following letter suitable or should I add / delete anything? Any help would be very much appreciated.

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I purchased a loan of £20,000 from you on 22nd January 2002 and now believe that I was mis-sold a payment protection policy with the loan for the following reasons:
This is due to the fact that I was not given the correct information when the policy was sold to me, as :-

• your salesperson stated/implied that taking out the policy would assist my credit application which was for debt consolodation. I was left under the impression that the loan application would be more likely unsuccessful if I were not taking the insurance protection.
• your salesperson did not tell me that the policy was optional and I have since realised that I could have had alternative insurance cover.
• your salesperson did not give me full information on what the policy would and would not cover. Nor did I receive from you any literature to explain the terms of the policy.
• I am concerned the sales person that sold me the policy had no financial background and that the policy was not sold in my best interests.

I settled this loan in May 2004 and was told when I queried the settlement figure that the Payment Protection policy was the reason the settlement figure was much higher than I had calculated. I was not advised what percentage or proportion of the policy was being repaid.

Unless you can satisfactorily justify to me that the policy was fair and reasonable I am requesting a full refund of all premiums, and subsequent interest on these payments, that I have paid to date. As I believe I have been deprived of this money I also expect 8% statutory interest, the amount a court would award, to be added to each payment made.

I look forward to a full and prompt response to this letter and for the matter to be concluded within eight weeks or I shall be contacting the Financial Ombudsman to investigate my complaint.
Yours faithfully,

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Originally Posted by mcg68

My question might be a straight forward one but I need some advice.
I took a loan from Ocean Finance in Jan 2002 for £20k which was for debt consolidation. I paid this off in May 2004 when I remortgaged my house but I can recall the settlement figure I got from them being massively over what I had calculted.

Anyway I paid it off and got on with my life.

Then 5 years later, I found the CAG forums and found out about PPI mis-selling so I wrote to Ocean with a SAR and I gets a bunch of stuff back which is all blacked out and hard to read but I apparently voluntarly bought some PPI with my £20k loan for the sum of £3986!!!!!

I am now sending them a PPI letter and wondered, is the following letter suitable or should I add / delete anything? Any help would be very much appreciated.

========================= =================
I purchased a loan of £20,000 from you on 22nd January 2002 and now believe that I was mis-sold a payment protection policy with the loan for the following reasons:
This is due to the fact that I was not given the correct information when the policy was sold to me, as :-

• your salesperson stated/implied that taking out the policy would assist my credit application which was for debt consolodation. I was left under the impression that the loan application would be more likely unsuccessful if I were not taking the insurance protection.
• your salesperson did not tell me that the policy was optional and I have since realised that I could have had alternative insurance cover.
• your salesperson did not give me full information on what the policy would and would not cover. Nor did I receive from you any literature to explain the terms of the policy.
• I am concerned the sales person that sold me the policy had no financial background and that the policy was not sold in my best interests.

I settled this loan in May 2004 and was told when I queried the settlement figure that the Payment Protection policy was the reason the settlement figure was much higher than I had calculated. I was not advised what percentage or proportion of the policy was being repaid.

Unless you can satisfactorily justify to me that the policy was fair and reasonable I am requesting a full refund of all premiums, and subsequent interest on these payments, that I have paid to date. As I believe I have been deprived of this money I also expect 8% statutory interest, the amount a court would award, to be added to each payment made.

I look forward to a full and prompt response to this letter and for the matter to be concluded within eight weeks or I shall be contacting the Financial Ombudsman to investigate my complaint.
Yours faithfully,

========================= =================

The letter looks fine, please see this from my complaint and if there is anything you can use to expand on what you have written please feel free to copy from this.

I repeat the grounds for mis-selling as detailed in my points 1 to 7 listed below.


1. Responsibilities When Underwriting a Policy of Insurance: On each occasion, when the details of a loan were discussed your sales advisors failed to check my personal circumstances at the time of the sale, which they are under obligation to do when underwriting a Policy of Insurance. If they had done so, they would have realised that the PPI policies were useless to me. At no time was any attempt made to ascertain if the product provided was fit for purpose, suitable for my needs or if indeed it was required at all.


2. Alternative Insurance Cover: Your sales advisors in each case failed to ask me if I had any alternative arrangements for insurance cover. My employer has a generous illness package which would cover a period of sickness as follows: 6 months full pay followed by 6 months half pay. I would also be entitled to a generous redundancy package and a substantial payment would be made in the event of my death in service (more than suffice to clear the balance of the loan).


3. Failure to Supply Important Information with Regard to Significant Policy Exclusions: I was most definitely not informed that the PPI policies could contain certain exclusions which could affect me and my ability to claim on the policies if I should need to. Additionally I was never told that Pre Existing Medical Conditions could invalidate my policy and I was never asked if I had any Pre Existing Medical Conditions. Indeed your Loan Customer Duty of Care Checklist and the Loanguard Certificate of Insurance to which the Customer Duty of Care Checklist refers (forwarded under cover of Reference N) contain no reference to any Pre Existing Medical Conditions or includes any questions to me on the subject. I am in fact in receipt of a 40% War Disablement Pension from Her Majesty’s Government (HMG) since 1991. One element of this pension includes back injury which I now know is an exclusion in your PPI Policies. I also believe that I would also be excluded on at least one other existing condition.


 Widespread PPI Mis-Selling:I cancelled the PPI policy on xxxxxxx Account No xxxxxxxxx on 7 Jan 2007 after becoming aware of the widespread mis-selling of PPI by some financial institutions, following recent media coverage and recent OFT and FSA investigations regarding the mis-selling of PPI. I believe this is borne out by Point 3 above. I am also aware that the question of PPI cover is the subject of an ongoing inquiry by the Competition Commissioner.


5. Wholly Inappropriate PPI Selling Bonuses: I understand that some employees are paid higher bonuses if they get prospective creditors to take out PPI with loans. How can the best interests of the customer possibly be met, if there is a clear conflict of interest between your responsibilities to me, and the drive of your employees to sell Payment Protection Insurance whether it is suitable or not in order to receive bonuses?


6. PPI Loan Interest payments miscalculated: Since I cancelled the policy, I have actually received a smaller reduction in the PPI loan interest payments than the figure stated on the agreement. The explanatory letter sent to me has, I believe, confirmed that I have paid for single premium PPI policies on each loan taken with your establishment.


7. True Nature of Single Premium PPI Not Explained: No explanation was forthcoming from any advisor on any occasion on the full extent of single premium PPI policies or the fact that they would offer little or no refund if the loan was settled early or if the insurance was cancelled. The statements you have forwarded on accounts 13189662 and 15276481, show no element of any refund of PPI or PPI interest when the accounts were settled on refinancing. There was also no explanation that the cost of the PPI premium would be added to the total cost of credit and interest added for the full term of the agreement. I believe this practice is unlawful.

I now believe that the single premium PPI policies attached to the loan accounts were both extremely unfair and totally unreasonable and offered me very little, if any protection value whatsoever. I am therefore requesting a full refund of all costs including all single PPI premiums that have been paid, the interest added to these premiums and the payments, that I have paid to date.

Furthermore as I believe I have been unlawfully deprived of this money, I also expect the repayment of the interest at the Statutory Interest rate of 8% applicable to of each of the single premiums.

In my letter dated 2 June I listed what I believed were the costs due to me for the recovery of mis-sold PPI on three accounts. All were single premiums for each account with interest added to each account. I have now made further investigations and enclose the revised figures that I now require to be repaid to me.

Details of the single premiums for each account with the interest payments made are as follows:

You can chop and edit as required but some stuff may be useful to you.