The Competition Commission (CC) has confirmed that it will introduce a remedies package based around a point-of-sale prohibition for all forms of payment protection insurance (PPI) – with the exception of retail PPI.
This follows the CC’s provisional decision on this issue, which was published in May this year.
The point-of-sale prohibition would stop the completion of sales of PPI during the sale of the associated credit product such as a personal loan. It was one of a package of measures the CC planned to introduce following its investigation into PPI, which concluded that businesses that offer PPI alongside credit face little or no competition when selling PPI to their credit customers.
The report and in particular the proposed point-of-sale prohibition were the subject of a legal challenge last year to the Competition Appeal Tribunal (CAT) by Barclays, supported by Lloyds Banking Group and Shop Direct Group Financial Services Ltd. Whilst upholding the CC’s conclusions as to the competition problems in this market, the CAT ruled that it must in particular consider further the role and importance of a potential drawback to the prohibition, namely that it might inconvenience customers.
Peter Davis, Inquiry Chairman and CC Deputy Chairman, said: “Having reviewed the evidence
