Consumers given more time to make PPI complaints

Consumers will temporarily be given more time to take complaints about payment protection insurance (PPI) to the Financial Ombudsman Service (FOS), the City regulator announced today.

The temporary rule, introduced by the Financial Services Authority (FSA) today, will suspend the existing six month time limit for referring complaints to the Ombudsman for five months, until 27 October 2010.

The rule applies to recent PPI complainants who have already been sent a final response from a firm between the dates of 28 November 2009 and 28 April 2010 inclusive.

The FSA said: ‘This action has been taken to ensure recent PPI complainants are not disadvantaged by running out of time to refer their complaint to the Ombudsman while the FSA works to resolve a long term solution to ensure customers are treated consistently and fairly when complaining about the sale of a PPI policy, or when buying a new one’.

The news comes just two weeks after the Competition Commission announced in a provisional verdict that a ban preventing banks from selling PPI at point of sale is set to go ahead.

The Competition Commission has said it hopes to have a final verdict on the matter by July.