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Payment Protection Insurance in the United Kingdom
Payment protection insurance (PPI), also known as credit insurance, credit protection insurance, or loan repayment insurance, is an insurance product that enables consumers to ensure repayment of credit if the borrower dies, becomes ill or disabled, loses a job, or faces other circumstances that may prevent them from earning income to service the debt. It is not to be confused with income protection insurance, which is not specific to a debt but covers any income. PPI was widely sold by banks and other credit providers as an add-on to the loan or overdraft product. PPI usually covers payments for a finite period (typically 12 months). For loans or mortgages this may be the entire monthly payment, for credit cards it is typically the minimum monthly payment. After this point the borrower must find other means to repay the debt, although some policies repay the debt in full if you are unable to return to work or are diagnosed with a critical illness. The period covered by insurance is typically long enough for most people to start working again and earn enough to service their debt. PPI is different from other types of insurance such as home insurance, in that it can be quite difficult to determine if it is right for a person or not. Careful assessment of what would happen if a person became unemployed would need to be considered, as payments in lieu of notice (for example) may render a claim ineligible despite the insured person being genuinely unemployed. In this case, the approach taken by PPI insurers is consistent with that taken by the Benefits Agency in respect of unemployment benefits. Most PPI policies are not sought out by consumers. In some cases, consumers claim to be unaware that they even have the insurance. In sales connected to loans, products were often promoted by commission based telesales departments. Fear of losing the loan was exploited, as the product was effectively cited as an element of underwriting. Any attention to suitability was likely to be minimal, if it existed at all. In all types of insurance some claims are accepted and some are rejected. Notably, in the case of PPI, the number of rejected claims is high compared to other types of insurance. In the rare cases where the customer is not prompted or pushed towards a policy, but seek it out, may have little recourse if and when a policy does not benefit them. As PPI is designed to cover repayments on loans and credit cards, most loan and credit card companies sell the product at the same time as they sell the credit product. By May 2008, 20 million PPI policies existed in the UK with a further increase of 7 million policies a year being purchased thereafter. Surveys show that 40% of policyholders claim to be unaware that they had a policy.{{Citation needed|date=August 2010} "PPI was mis-sold and complaints about it mishandled on an industrial scale for well over a decade." with this mis-selling being carried out by not only the banks or providers, but also by third party brokers. The sale of such policies was typically encouraged by large commissions, as the insurance would commonly make the bank/provider more money than the interest on the original loan, such that many mainstream personal loan providers made little or no profit on the loans themselves; all or almost all profit was derived from PPI commission and profit share. Certain companies developed sales scripts which guided salespeople to say only that the loan was “protected” without mentioning the nature or cost of the insurance. When challenged by the customer, they sometimes incorrectly stated that this insurance improved the borrower's chances of getting the loan or that it was mandatory. A consumer in financial difficulty is unlikely to further question the policy and risk the loan being refused. Several high-profile companies have now been fined by the Financial Conduct Authority for the widespread mis-selling of Payment Protection Insurance. The Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) fined Clydesdale Bank Plc (Clydesdale) £20,678,300 for serious failings in its Payment Protection Insurance (PPI) complaint handling processes between May 2011 and July 2013. This is the largest ever fine imposed by the FCA for failings relating to PPI. Clydesdale agreed to settle at an early stage of the FCA’s investigation and therefore qualified for at 30% stage 1 discount. Were it not for this the FCA would have imposed a financial penalty of £29,540,500.Alliance and Leicester were fined £7m for their part in the mis-selling controversy, several others including Capital One, HFC and Egg were fined up to £1.1m. Claims against mis-sold PPI have been slowly increasing, and may approach the levels seen during the 2006-07 period, when thousands of bank customers made claims relating to allegedly unfair bank charges. In their 2009/2010 annual report, the Financial Ombudsman Service stated that 30% of new cases referred to payment protection insurance. A customer who purchases a PPI policy may initiate a claim for mis-sold PPI by complaining to the bank, lender, or broker who sold the policy. Slightly before that, on 6 April 2011, the Competition Commission released their investigation order designed to prevent mis-selling in the future. Key rules in the order, designed to enable the customer to shop around and make an informed decision, include: provision of adequate information when selling payment protection and providing a personal quote; obligation to provide an annual review; prohibition of selling payment protection at the same time the credit agreement is entered into. Most rules came into force in October 2011, with some following in April 2012. The Central Bank of Ireland in April 2014 was described as having "arbitrarily excluded the majority of consumers" from getting compensation for mis-sold Payment Protection Insurance, by setting a cutoff date of 2007 when it introduced its Consumer Protection Code. UK banks provided over £22bn for PPI misselling costs – which, if scaled on a pro-rata basis, is many multiples of the compensation the Irish banks were asked to repay. The offending banks were also not fined which was in sharp contrast to the regime imposed on UK banks. Lawyers were appalled at the "reckless" advice the Irish Central Bank gave consumers who were missold PPI policies, which "will play into the hands of the financial institution."
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  • 25 Oct 2022
Topic Review
Altitude (Triangle)
In geometry, an altitude of a triangle is a line segment through a vertex and perpendicular to (i.e., forming a right angle with) a line containing the base (the side opposite the vertex). This line containing the opposite side is called the extended base of the altitude. The intersection of the extended base and the altitude is called the foot of the altitude. The length of the altitude, often simply called "the altitude", is the distance between the extended base and the vertex. The process of drawing the altitude from the vertex to the foot is known as dropping the altitude at that vertex. It is a special case of orthogonal projection. Altitudes can be used in the computation of the area of a triangle: one half of the product of an altitude's length and its base's length equals the triangle's area. Thus, the longest altitude is perpendicular to the shortest side of the triangle. The altitudes are also related to the sides of the triangle through the trigonometric functions. In an isosceles triangle (a triangle with two congruent sides), the altitude having the incongruent side as its base will have the midpoint of that side as its foot. Also the altitude having the incongruent side as its base will be the angle bisector of the vertex angle. It is common to mark the altitude with the letter h (as in height), often subscripted with the name of the side the altitude is drawn to. In a right triangle, the altitude drawn to the hypotenuse c divides the hypotenuse into two segments of lengths p and q. If we denote the length of the altitude by hc, we then have the relation For acute and right triangles the feet of the altitudes all fall on the triangle's sides (not extended). In an obtuse triangle (one with an obtuse angle), the foot of the altitude to the obtuse-angled vertex falls in the interior of the opposite side, but the feet of the altitudes to the acute-angled vertices fall on the opposite extended side, exterior to the triangle. This is illustrated in the adjacent diagram: in this obtuse triangle, an altitude dropped perpendicularly from the top vertex, which has an acute angle, intersects the extended horizontal side outside the triangle.
  • 5.1K
  • 25 Oct 2022
Topic Review
Juniper M Series
Juniper M series is a line of multiservice edge routers designed and manufactured by Juniper Networks, for enterprise and service provider networks. It spans over M7i, M10i, M40e, M120, and M320 platforms with 5 Gbit/s up to 160 Gbit/s of full-duplex throughput. The M40 router was the first product by Juniper Networks, which was released in 1998. The M-series routers run on JUNOS Operating System.
  • 905
  • 25 Oct 2022
Topic Review
Censorship of YouTube
The video-sharing platform YouTube is the second-most popular website as of August 2019, according to Alexa Internet. According to the company's press page, YouTube has more than one billion users, and each day, those users watch more than one billion hours of video. Censorship of it has occurred and continues to occur to varying degrees in most countries throughout the world.
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  • 25 Oct 2022
Topic Review
Riemannian Metric and Lie Bracket in Computational Anatomy
Computational anatomy (CA) is the study of shape and form in medical imaging. The study of deformable shapes in computational anatomy rely on high-dimensional diffeomorphism groups [math]\displaystyle{ \varphi \in \operatorname{Diff}_V }[/math] which generate orbits of the form [math]\displaystyle{ \mathcal{M} \doteq \{ \varphi \cdot m \mid \varphi \in \operatorname{Diff}_V \} }[/math]. In CA, this orbit is in general considered a smooth Riemannian manifold since at every point of the manifold [math]\displaystyle{ m \in \mathcal{M} }[/math] there is an inner product inducing the norm [math]\displaystyle{ \| \cdot \|_m }[/math] on the tangent space that varies smoothly from point to point in the manifold of shapes [math]\displaystyle{ m \in \mathcal{M} }[/math]. This is generated by viewing the group of diffeomorphisms [math]\displaystyle{ \varphi \in \operatorname{Diff}_V }[/math] as a Riemannian manifold with [math]\displaystyle{ \| \cdot \|_\varphi }[/math], associated to the tangent space at [math]\displaystyle{ \varphi \in\operatorname{Diff}_V }[/math] . This induces the norm and metric on the orbit [math]\displaystyle{ m \in \mathcal{M} }[/math] under the action from the group of diffeomorphisms.
  • 993
  • 25 Oct 2022
Topic Review
Internet-Based Treatments for Trauma Survivors
Internet-based treatments for trauma survivors is a growing class of online treatments that allow for an individual who has experienced trauma to seek and receive treatment without needing to attend psychotherapy in person. The progressive movement to online resources and the need for more accessible mental health services has given rise to the creation of online-based interventions aimed to help those who have experienced traumatic events. Cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) has shown to be particularly effective in the treatment of trauma-related disorders and adapting CBT to an online format has been shown to be as effective as in-person CBT in the treatment of trauma. Due to its positive outcomes, CBT-based internet treatment options for trauma survivors has been an expanding field in both research and clinical settings.
  • 854
  • 27 Oct 2022
Topic Review
AlphaServer
AlphaServer is a series of server computers, produced from 1994 onwards by Digital Equipment Corporation, and later by Compaq and HP. AlphaServers were based on the DEC Alpha 64-bit microprocessor. Supported operating systems for AlphaServers are Tru64 UNIX (formerly Digital UNIX), OpenVMS, MEDITECH MAGIC and Windows NT (on earlier systems, with AlphaBIOS ARC firmware), while enthusiasts have provided alternative operating systems such as Linux, NetBSD, OpenBSD and FreeBSD. The Alpha processor was also used in a line of workstations, AlphaStation. Some AlphaServer models were rebadged in white enclosures as Digital Servers for the Windows NT server market. These so-called "white box" models comprised the following: As part of the roadmap to phase out Alpha-, MIPS- and PA-RISC-based systems in favor of Itanium-based systems at HP, the most recent AlphaServer systems reached their end of general availability on 27 April 2007. The availability of upgrades and options was discontinued on 25 April 2008, approximately one year after the systems were discontinued. Support for the most recent AlphaServer systems, the DS15A, DS25, ES45, ES47, ES80 and GS1280 is being provided by HP Services as of 2008. These systems are scheduled to reach end of support sometime during 2012, although HP has stated that this event may be delayed.
  • 978
  • 25 Oct 2022
Topic Review
Air Displacement Pipette
Piston-driven air displacement pipettes are a type of micropipette, which are tools to handle volumes of liquid in the microliter scale. They are more commonly used in biology and biochemistry, and less commonly in chemistry; the equipment is susceptible to damage from many organic solvents.
  • 2.1K
  • 25 Oct 2022
Topic Review
Prajñā (Hinduism)
Pragña or Pragya (Sanskrit: प्रज्ञ) as प्रज्ञा, प्राज्ञ and प्राज्ञा is used to refer to the highest and purest form of wisdom, intelligence and understanding. Pragya is the state of wisdom which is higher than the knowledge obtained by reasoning and inference.
  • 7.9K
  • 25 Oct 2022
Topic Review
Dance Dance Revolution S
Dance Dance Revolution S (ダンスダンスレボリューションS, Dansu Dansu Reboryūshon Esu), commonly abbreviated as DDR S, is a rhythm game by Konami available for the iOS, as part of the company's Dance Dance Revolution series of music video games. Announced by Konami in January 2009, the game was made available via Apple's App Store in Japan on February 27, 2009. It was later made available in the United States and Europe on March 5, 2009 and May 14, 2009 respectively. While gameplay is very similar to other Dance Dance Revolution titles, a new mode dubbed "Shake Mode" is available in which players are able to shake their device in certain directions to the rhythm of the music.
  • 1.0K
  • 25 Oct 2022
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