A new report by the Competition Commission has revealed that people who buy Payment Protection Insurance (PPI) are being overcharged by £1.4 billion a year.
The Commission said that the principle reason for the overcharging was a lack of competition as PPI policies are usually sold at the same time with the loans they are taken out to protect. As a result of this, the Commission is looking to ban the sale of PPI alongside the associated credit product to see whether this will improve the competition among PPI providers and therefore lower prices .
Competition Commission's deputy chairman, Peter Davis, said: "The way PPI is sold as an 'add-on' to a loan or other credit product means distributors escape the pressure they should face from competing suppliers. Distributors don't appear to compete much with each other on either price or quality of PPI; neither do they appear to do much direct advertising of PPI to win customers from each other."




