Martin Lewis

So effectively, there was a premium added to the interest rate in order to pay more commission.

Now, that's a DCA and that's where it all started.

And my original template letters only covered that.

They were banned on the 28th of January 2021.

So even though you can complain to a later date, you're only complaining about DCAs till that date.

Now, many people, the original template letters and even the current ones, one of the questions they ask is, did you have a discretionary commission arrangement?

If you have had a response to that saying, yes, you did have a discretionary commission arrangement,

then you are very likely, if the FCA scheme goes ahead, to be entitled to money back.

And it should be in the high hundreds of pounds.

But exactly how much you get depends on when you had the discretionary commission arrangement, what the level of commission was, what the size of your agreement was.

If you were told you didn't have a discretionary commission arrangement, you may still have been missold.

Now, if you only put in a complaint about discretionary commission arrangements...

then the firm will have to look at the other cases, but you won't be in that I've complained group who were at the head of the distribution table who'll get their money first.

So if you put in one of the early template letters on discretionary commission arrangements and were told you didn't have one, I'd be putting in another complaint now over the other two types of mis-selling, which are contractual ties.

That's where a broker didn't tell you it worked primarily with one lender.

There is an exemption here now that if it was obvious capture, so a Volkswagen dealer with Volkswagen Finance doesn't count within this.

But effectively, if they didn't tell you it was working with one lender, so you thought you were going to a competitive panel of car financiers, that's not an easy word, of car financiers,

and they then effectively save one company first dibs, it got you and they didn't put it to a panel, again, you could have been missold.

And there's millions of agreements who are potentially missold there.

The final category, unfairly high commission.