The World Health Organisation released a statement recently which warned that 40% of the UK population could fall victim to swine flu if the outbreak becomes pandemic. If this were to happen, it’s likely that someone who has the illness would be either too ill or too contagious to go to work.

So, the question that could lead to even more PPI refund claims is: would your PPI policy cover you if you were unable to work due to swine flu?

I mean, we all know how much insurers like to wriggle out of their obligations as they point out some obscure small print or in this case, possibly the exclusion of new viruses in the cover your policy provides.

If you have a PPI policy, the best thing you can do is check whether your insurer will pay out should you fall victim to the virus. If you had the foresight to confirm cover with your provider when you signed up, but have more recently been told they won’t cover swine flu; you might want to make a PPI refund claim and move to a provider that does.

Credit card charges have seriously pushed up the cost of withdrawing cash over the past year, despite the Bank of England base rate falling to an all-time low.

The average interest on a credit card cash withdrawal is 25.4%, with some lenders charging borrowers £5 a time. This means that if you were to take out £10 at an ATM on their credit card, it’d be like withdrawing £15 except you don’t get the extra £5!

The worst culprets are Easyjet, Shell, Egg, Ultima and bmibaby who all issue credit card charges of £5 for cash withdrawals. But they’re not all trying to screw us, the Co-op and First Trust Bank offer credit cards without withdrawal fees, you still pay the interest on the debt though.