Arnold Schwarzenegger is being featured in a new advertising campaign designed to create awareness of the deadline to make a complaint to the United Kingdom's Financial Conduct Authority (“FCA”) about payment protection insurance (“PPI”).
In the ad, an animatronic model of Mr. Schwarzenegger's head is seen urging people to make a decision about making a PPI complaint before the deadline on 29th August 2019.
The FCA has introduced the deadline to prompt people into deciding whether to check if they had PPI and whether they want to make a complaint.
The campaign has been designed by the FCA, which introduced the deadline to bring to an end over a decade of complaints about PPI. The campaign is appearing on TV, online, and on outdoor advertising across the United Kingdom over the next two years.
Andrew Bailey, the FCA's chief executive, said, “Our campaign aims to cut through the noise on PPI. We want to encourage people to decide whether to find out if they had PPI and whether to complain or not. Our message, and Arnie's, is 'do it now' and I urge people to make a decision before the deadline on 29 August 2019.”
Over £27.4 billion has been paid out to customers since the FCA introduced rules for complaining about PPI in 2011. PPI policies were sold alongside loans, credit cards, store cards, and mortgages mostly between the 1990s and 2010.
The campaign is being paid for by the 18 firms including banks, building societies, and credit card providers who had the most PPI complaints. The FCA said that firms also have agreed to a number of steps to ensure that the complaints process is as easy as possible for their customers, including:
- Providing an option for people to submit their complaint online;
- Ensuring that complaint forms are as easy to understand as possible and do not put customers off complaining;
- Providing support to vulnerable customers who may need extra help to submit complaints; and
- Providing useful and free-to-use PPI checking processes.
According to the FCA, customers could be entitled to compensation even if they were not mis-sold. If a customer has complained about PPI previously, and had the complaint rejected, the customer may be entitled to compensation if the provider earned a high level of commission from selling PPI, the FCA said.
The FCA has established a new dedicated phone line designed to assist customers with their PPI queries. The FCA has also updated its webpages to give more help to customers in making a decision.
Learn more: 60 second PPI deadline ad; 30 second PPI deadline ad.
Steven A. Meyerowitz
Steven A. Meyerowitz, a Harvard Law School graduate, is the founder and president of Meyerowitz Communications Inc., a law firm marketing communications consulting company. He may be contacted at [email protected].