‘Build it and they will come....’

As banks prepare to pay out billions of pounds in compensation to customers who were strong-armed or tricked into taking worthless Payment Protection Insurance (PPI) policies, it is hard to imagine how these practices were operated on such a large scale and over such a long period of time without anybody in the organisations involved standing up and saying ‘erm...I don't think we should be doing this?’

It also begs questions as to what went on at the staff training sessions for these products. We’d like to imagine that if an audio recording of such a training session was unearthed, it may go a little like this:

Somewhere in deepest Slough, circa 2007......

Instructor: Good morning ladies and gentlemen! Welcome to Globobanks’s PPI sales training program. Today you’re going to learn some of the fundamentals of selling our main product, Payment Protection Insurance.

Luckily for you we have arranged some live demonstrations by some of the most successful PPI salespeople of our generation. People like Ron ‘The Hammer’ Sheldon and Margaret ‘The Merciless’ Green are just some of the legends that we have assembled here today for your benefit.

But firstly, let’s start with the basics. Our PPI policy is an insurance plan which covers a customer’s loan payments in the event of them being made redundant or unable to work through sickness. They pay us a monthly premium for the privilege and in return they get a lovely warm fuzzy feeling of being protected.

Trainee: So if they’re off work for a week with flu, it will cover their payments?

Instructor: My god no! They need to be off work for at least a month, just to make sure that they’re really ill. The hope is that they might die before they put in a claim although some of them hang on just to spite us.

Trainee: Oh, does it pay out automatically after the month?

Instructor: [Belly Laugh] - Oh dear, the innocence of youth! No, we just start the claim process then and after another thirty days tell them that they weren't covered after all. In a way we’re doing them a favour although you’d never think it the way those troublemakers at Watchdog go on although that Ann Robinson can be strangely alluring..........[wistful silence].

Trainee: Oh......aren't insurance policies normally underwritten at the start, so we know whether we can cover them or not?

Instructor: Yes, but that’s the beauty of this product, we underwrite it at the point of claim, saving the hassle of all those messy medical questions at the beginning.

Trainee: So they could be paying for a policy that won’t pay out? Do we give them their premiums back if it turns out that they were never covered?

Instructor: [Sounding exasperated] - Not exactly no......look you’re thinking about this far too hard and I’m not sure you’re cut out for this, I’m just going to ask a couple of my colleagues to step into the room and perhaps you could go with them for erm....extra training.

[Muffled radio conversation] - Security team to room three, code sigma four, cleansing required - [sound of door opening and heavy footsteps approaching].

Instructor: Ah gentleman, can you escort this trainee to the reprogramming facility.

Trainee: Reprogramming what? What’s that? Ow you’re hurting my arm, I'm not sure.... [sound of door slamming and a hushed silence descending on the room].

Instructor: OK, let’s observe some real life sales action. On the other side of this glass is what looks like an ordinary branch and those people that you see queuing are real live customers. What they don’t know is that this is actually an exhibition arena for some of the PPI legends of our generation. It’s a bit like ‘Field of Dreams’ but with insurance instead of baseball.

Let’s watch Sheldon deal with this young couple who look like first time buyers trying to get a mortgage. Now, can you see how he’s automatically included the PPI payments into the loan and just given them one monthly repayment figure? That’s text book sales everybody, if they don’t know it’s in there they can’t ask you to take it out can they?

What you probably didn’t notice, and I wouldn’t expect you to because it was done with Jedi magic, was how he rolled up all of the PPI payments for the 25 year mortgage term and then added them onto the loan as a lump sum. That means that we get 25 years of premiums upfront, they get to pay interest on them for the life of their mortgage and most importantly Sheldon has trebled his commission for the sale. Watch and learn my young Padowans, watch and learn.

Oh hey-up the customers clocked it and he’s asked if the PPI is mandatory, that’s a bit of a schoolboy error from Sheldon and he’s going to be a bit embarrassed when he watches this back. Let’s see how he handles it.........woooah, world class skills there; did you see how he intimated that the mortgage may be declined if they didn’t include it? I think he’s showboating there a little by making the girl well up, but that’s excellent work, he’s used their fear about losing out on their first home to get a very good sale.....excellent recovery, it really is a privilege to watch a craftsman at work.

Trainee: I couldn’t help but notice that the customer was self-employed. I didn’t think the policy would pay out for self-employed people?

Instructor: [Crackling radio call] Can you send another security team to training room one please?...

Trainee: No.....please don’t....I need this job....[sound of a struggle...door slams].

Instructor: Now, does anybody else have any questions?

[Stunned silence]

Instructor: OK. Now let’s watch Margaret the Merciless in operation here. Can you see how she’s prowling up and down the queue of customers under the guise of doing customer feedback surveys? She’s actually hunting in a pack with Alan ‘The Assassin’ McKenzie and they’ll be trying to separate one of the punters away from the protection of the herd. I think she’s got her eye on that old lady there but......ooohh fantastic teamwork, did you see how McKenzie distracted the husband whilst Margaret maneuvered herself between him and his wife. The old dear is completely bamboozled and doesn't know whether she’s coming or going. By using the pincer movement Margaret has now got her signed up to a PPI policy and she’s also upgraded her account to platinum status and sold her some boiler insurance. World class sales, it’s a joy to watch, it really is.

But now for a word of caution. Working in the field can be a difficult life. Trying to maintain your cover and keep up the pretence that you are there to provide banking services for the customers benefit. It can be hard to live a lie for so long and for those with weaker minds, it can prove too much as we saw with the ‘Smithson Incident’ back in ‘92.

Smithson was one of our brightest stars, he smashed sales record after sales record and nobody saw it coming. He was operating out of Dorking branch under the cover of a Branch Manger when he went native. Warning bells started going off when he was approving loans for people who actually needed them, against the company policy of only granting them to people who could prove conclusively that they didn’t, but it was only when he started employing enough cashiers to serve the customers without the need for queuing through their entire lunch hour that the extraction team was finally sent in. By the time they got there he’d also signed off on a small business loan for a local company. A very messy business which shocked the team to the core. We managed to put it right by forcing the small business into liquidation and asset stripping it to repay our loan but the consequences could have been far reaching. Rumour has it that files were found in his drawer with plans to start opening the branch on Saturdays! Can you imagine!

And on that bombshell it is time for you to collect your pens and application forms from the armoury and enter the field. Some of you will make it through, some of you will fall - [sound of Tina Turner’s ‘Simply The Best’ starts to play through a loudspeaker] - some of you may even return as legends to live out your days in the theatre of dreams.........only time will tell. Good luck my friends and may the force be with you.

Write a Comment

Your Name
Your Comment
	Enter the number in the image in the box:

You can login or register a new account and your details will be prepopulated