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“There have been several cases where the regulator has fined UK insurers for mis-selling insurance policies. Explain why such mis-selling has taken place. Will the new rule that insurers cannot pay commission on the sale of life insurance policies providing investment benefits mean that such policies will no longer be mis-sold?”
For decades the insurance industry has had several issues regarding the mis-selling of insurance policies. “Mis-selling is the sale of unsuitable products resulting in customers being left in a disadvantageous position”(Wyman, 2011, P.4), and aptly stated by the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) “financial services must be sold to you in a manner that is “fair, clear and not misleading” (www.moneyadviceservice.org.uk). There are numerous examples of mis-selling scandals such as endowment mortgages and Payment Protection Insurance (PPI) to name a select few, which shall be analysed throughout. Further to this, the reasons as to why mis-selling occurred in the first place will be discussed as well as whether, due to new legislation regarding the prohibition of commission payment, these policies will continue to be mis-sold. In the views of the economist Friedrich Hayek, due to complex taxes and the use of jargon that is alien to investors, there will always be asymmetric information and thus never a perfect market and thus resulting in the occurrence of mis-selling (Adams, 2005. P.207).
Mis-selling has proved costly for UK insurers, brokers and banks, which has further added to the low levels of confidence in the financial sector. For instance, in the 1980s pension products were mis-sold and the effects of which were fully recognised in 1993-94; according to the Financial Services Authority (FSA) the “pensions mis-selling scandal will have cost insurers and financial advisers at least £11.8bn” in

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