My bank have two different departments, one for credit cards and loans (mine was the latter to finish off a bathroom extension and some other work when we bought a new house), the other for mortgages (no PPI there). As lcg and evian have suggested, you need a core argument, in my case I really didn't need it with all the protection for me that my employer had built into the contract, but the loan was made "conditional" to haing PPI - and strongly suggested that approval would be "easier to approve" with it That remark also came offsite when I bought my bank manager lunch, he having moved coincidentally from Truro to the Big Smoke and taking on the branches near where I worked, I couldn't remember the precise day but did know exactly where the lunch took place as, put it this way, it's rather a landmark site.