The miss-selling of PPI first emerged publicly at a national level in 2005, yet 13 years later many of us continue to get phone calls almost on a weekly basis from companies that claim to be able to help us reclaim the sums we have paid out for a product that was of poor quality and over sold. I was a financial adviser from 1991-2002 and even in the mid 90’s we knew that the PPI products were poor quality and rarely got paid out when people tried to make a claim. Thankfully we did not offer PPI directly and only offered it to people who wanted financial products that came from companies that tied PPI into their products. Under such circumstances the clients knowingly accepted the PPI because they were limited in their choices. Sadly at the time some people did press for PPI because of the way in which newspapers promoted the idea, no doubt following a campaign by the insurance companies. As a result of this banks have been obliged to pour huge sums of money into the process of correcting their mistakes. Any money that the banks spend like this come from customers or shareholders or both.

The miss-selling of Brexit emerged publicly in the hours after our vote on 23rd June 2016 and ever since has continued to be displayed in a variety of ways. Thankfully we have not yet left the European Union and so there is a possibility that our future as a nation can be shaped in a way that leaves us still connected to our strongest trading partners and a large number of nations that in previous decades were our greatest threats. The documents that have been provided to the Government to advise them on what the future looks like may not be publicly available yet, but the disclosures over PPI which have forced the banks to spend our money on their failures, are a lesson that the Government should observe. The advisory documents will emerge in due course and personally I do not want to have a barrage of phone calls from companies offering me compensation for the costs incurred by the lies and miss-selling of Brexit. However if the Government press ahead with Brexit as things currently stand, I suspect we are guaranteed that in due course the calls will begin.