The biggest target of these claims are for block PPI policies that were taken out with mortgages.
What would happen would be that the monthly premium would be calculated over a 5 year period. So if the PPI for a client was £30 a month, the dodgy mortgage advisors that were around in those days (not me I promise ) would talk the customer into purchasing the five years of cover upfront.
So £30 x 60 = £1,800 would be purchased by the client. Now, most people don't have £1800 to purchase insurance in advance so the broker would suggest borrowing it on top of the mortgage.
So £1,800 would be added to the mortgage, upon which they would be paying interest on for the term of the mortgage
The commissions to the advisors was huge, mainly because the policy could not be cancelled as it had been purchased in advance, so PPI mortgage sales were rife.
The main problems came from the fact that most of the time the advisors would ignore the fact that the PPI was for employed applicants, even though the client was self employed meaning the policy would never pay out. Also, most clients thought the cover was for the life of the mortgage not just fives years.
Fortunately, PPI never sat right for me and I avoided providing my clients with it at the time, which I'm glad of now