People who wish to buy Payment Protection Insurance (PPI) are now able to get advice from the website of the Financial Services Authority (FSA). The financial watchdog has created a set of tables to help consumers compare the policies on offer and their cost.

The purpose of the PPI insurance is to insure people in case they find themselves in a position where cannot repay loans due to ill health or job loss, and has proved to be a controversial policy since its introduction.

This month the Competition Commission said that insurance companies were overcharging their PPI customers by £1.4billion a year. A spokesman for the FSA said that the introduction of the comparison tables was:

"A starting point to give customers basic information about what the polices offer and what they cost". "PPI is almost always optional and consumers need to consider their own financial circumstances when deciding to purchase it and make sure they are clear about what will be covered," he added.

The selling of PPI policies has been surrounded with controversy for several years, with critics such as the Citizens Advice describing the industry as a "protection racket".

Insurance companies have been accused of selling polices that are too expensive and may even fail to provide the policy holder wit the cover they claim to offer. The FSA has handed out numerous fines on financial companies for mis-selling PPI policies. And the Competition Commission even suggested that to protect customers it by imposing temporary price limits and ban firms from selling PPI policies to customers at the same point at which they take out a loan.

In the last financial year nearly 11,000 people complained to the Financial Ombudsman Service about the PPI policies they had bought, making the insurance one of the fastest growing sources of complaint.

The FSA' conducted their own research and found that many firms that sell PPI policies have not been treating their customers fairly because they do not provide them with enough, if any, information to decide if they really do need the insurance. With the implementation of the new FSA comparison tables is a step towards helping consumers makes the right decisions for themselves. This is because they invite customers to type in basic details about themselves and their needs and then the system will display the possible policies on offer and how much they cost.

The tables do not however cover the entire insurance market because some providers chose not to supply details of their policies. However, the FSA has said its tables still will give "comprehensive" coverage and they also show which companies have not supplied information for inclusion. The consumers association Which?, has already warned consumers to be careful if buying a PPI policy. As their personal finance expert has said:

"While comparison tables are always useful, people should be aware that there are alternative and better products than PPI,"

The other tables on the FSA website, which cover topics such as mortgages, savings, annuities and endowments, receive about 80,000 hits a month.