Island Life Magazine Ltd February/March 2014 | Page 103

BUSINESS LIFE Q & A with an Island business J TELEPHONE: [phone] EMAIL: [email protected] MP Partnership have recently celebrated seven years of trading and 2013 was their best ever year. The small family owned and operated business based in Sandown has been helping clients on the Isle of Wight to recover money from their banks, finance companies and credit card providers since 2006. A significant proportion of their business relates to recovering mis-sold PPI (Payment Protection Insurance) and there can’t be a person on the Island that hasn’t had an annoying phone call or text pestering them to make a ‘PPI claim’. Island Life spoke to Jon Platt, Managing Director of JMP Partnership. Q: We’ve all had unsolicited calls about PPI, do you make them? A: JMP Partnership has never made a sales call, and never buys data from the firms that do. It is hugely frustrating that our industry has been tarnished by the unscrupulous and intrusive marketing tactics of a small number of PPI firms. The very great majority of our clients contact us following a recommendation from a friend or family member. Q: Why was 2013 your best year? A: Unfortunately a number of myths exist that have acted as barriers, preventing people from trying to get their money back. The leading ones are: I don’t have the account details, I don’t have the paperwork, I don’t know if I was sold PPI, it was more than six years ago so I can’t make a claim? Very rarely are any of these ‘perceived barriers’ a problem for us. That’s our job, to take as much information as we can from the client. From that we can usually get the account details and all the paperwork from the bank or credit card company using the Data Protection Act. If there is PPI on any of those accounts, it’s our job to get the premiums refunded with interest.’ Q: Why don’t people just do it themselves? A: In some cases it can be very simple, and people can and really should have a go if they feel confident about their case. However very often people don’t have any paperwork; don’t know why they might have been mis-sold PPI and are reluctant to act in case they do the wrong thing and they lose out on thousands of pounds. get you any money back, our service is free. If we are successful our typical fee is 25 per cent of whatever we recover +vat. Q: Who is the ‘typical’ JMP Partnership client? A: The majority of our clients are aged over 40 and have had multiple loans and credit cards over 20 or more years. Typically the clients that get the most money back are aged over 50, have refinanced loans many times and each time been sold another PPI policy. PPI was almost always unsuitable for people who were self-employed. They could not have claimed on these policies in many cases and we win nearly all the cases that we pursue for clients who are or were self-employed. Q: What’s the largest sum of money you have recovered for a single client on the Island? A: £145,000 for one client from multiple lenders. Q: How can someone be mis-sold £145,000 of PPI? A: This client got more than just PPI back. We recovered all the ‘default charges’ applied to multiple credit cards and mortgage accounts over a period of many years and all the interest that had accrued on those charges. The client also had multiple business lo