Protection Products

Following the long awaited publication of the CMA (Competition and Markets Authority) remedies and the substantial deprioritisation of the Retail Market Review, insurance experts at Protection Products Ltd are reported to have designed a fully OFGEM compliant Payment Waiver for the energy sector, and are now working with a number of energy firms in... the UK. Roger Humber, CEO at Protection Products Ltd said: "The ability to build Payment Waiver into Utility Contracts is now a reality; and given that Government statistics reveal 54% of the population have less than £1,500 in savings, the timing couldn't be better". (DWP Family Resources Survey Page 59) Payment Waiver is the term given to a contractual promise by which the customer's obligation to make a payment is permanently waived. If a customer experiences a Waiver Event, a payment which would otherwise fall due is simply written off. The customer is not in arrears, a debt does not accrue, and the customer's credit rating is not affected. Payment Waiver is not a new concept. When you last hired a car you were probably offered Collision Damage Waiver, and when you last bought a house, you may have been offered a Solicitors Abortive Cost Scheme. Both act in exactly the same way, and contractually remove an obligation to make a payment if 'x' happens. That, in a nutshell, is Payment Waiver. Since 2001, Payment Waiver has been incorporated into numerous mortgage, telecom and car finance agreements with names such as Peugeot, Citroen, Vanquis Bank, Scottish Police and the British Airways credit union. For the studious out there (or for those with 'Compliance in their job title), the legal basis of Payment Waiver as non-insurance product feature comes from well-established case law Griffiths v Welcome Financial (see para 18) which was specifically referred to by the FSA in January 2013 (page 9) when they determined that Payment Waiver was not insurance, but a contractual promise. The importance of such a decision being that an energy firm does not need to be FCA ...Read More