recourse when they discover it is of no benefit. As PPI is designed to cover repayments on loans and credit cards, most loan and credit card companies sell the product at the same time as they sell the credit product. By May 2008, 20 million PPI policies existed in the UK with a further increase of 7 million policies a year being purchased thereafter. Surveys show that 40% of policyholders claim to be unaware that they had a policy. "PPI was mis-sold and complaints about it mishandled on an industrial scale for well over a decade", with this mis-selling being carried out by not only the banks or providers, but also by third party brokers. The sale of such policies was typically encouraged by large commissions, as the insurance would commonly make the bank/provider more money than the interest on the original loan, such that many mainstream personal loan providers made little or no profit on the loans themselves; all or almost all profit was derived from PPI commission and profit share. Certain companies developed sales scripts which guided salespeople to say only that the loan was "protected" without mentioning the nature or cost of the insurance. When challenged by the customer, they sometimes incorrectly stated that this insurance improved the borrower's chances of getting the loan or that it was mandatory. A consumer in financial difficulty is unlikely to further question the policy and risk the loan being refused. Several high-profile companies have now been fined by the Financial Conduct Authority for the widespread mis-selling of PPI. The Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) fined Clydesdale Bank £20,678,300 for serious failings in its PPI complaint handling processes between May 2011 and July 2013. This is the largest ever fine imposed by the FCA for failings relating to PPI. Clydesdale agreed to settle at an early stage of the FCA's investigation and therefore qualified for at 30% stage 1 discount. Were it not for this the FCA would have imposed a financial penalty of £29,540,500. Alliance and Leicester were fined £7m for their part in the mis-selling controversy, several others including Capital One, HSBC Finance and Egg were fined up to £1.1m. Claims against mis-sold PPI have been slowly increasing, and may approach the levels seen during the 2006–07 period, when thousands of bank customers made claims relating to allegedly unfair bank charges. In their 2009/2010 annual report, the Financial Ombudsman Service