Financial News: The Financial Services Authority (FSA) is going to stop commission payments to financial advisers for the sale of investment policies. Many industry commentators are touting this as ‘big deal’ because many believe it was the commission and hefty sales targets that led to the mis-selling scandals.

The change will come into effect from 2012 and will ‘remove commission bias’ from the sale of financial products such as investments, pensions, annuities and unit trusts. But the FSA have stopped short of applying the new rules to insurance products and in doing so have made no effort to cutail mis sold PPI and similar scandals. Now, instead of shifting policies and counting the profit, providers will now have to be upfront about how much they charge while being clear about the cost of their advice.

We all know that the way we’ve been treated by banks is shocking, from mis-sold PPI and endowments to excessive bank charges and record levels of interest. Right now, we’re being charged more in interest than at any point over the last 12 years and to borrow our own money back from the banks. But while we get hit with record interest levels, the Bank of England Base Rate remains at 0.5% meaning any savings we have are virtually standing still.

Part of the problem with banks is they’re greedy, this results in screwing every penny from a good customer and doing anything to get another sale on the board. A recent article in the Daily Mail discusses just how bad pressure selling has got in our high street bank branches…

If you’ve put off a PPI claim because you don’t hink it’s worth it or because you don’t know if you have a case, then this may just pursuade you… A woman who owed her credit card company over £8,000 has had the debt written off because of unfair Payment Protection Insurance.

A court found that the ‘secret’ commission paid to the credit card company by the PPI provider made the credit contract term unfair. As a result, the credit card agreement breached the Consumer Credit Act 1974 and all of the debt was wiped out, the woman won’t have to pay a penny back. Fancy making a claim now?