Stampede to beat payout deadline
FIRMS paid out more than £11million a day in PPI refunds in the final six months of last year.
Figures from the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) show the amount dished out in compensation to people mis-sold payment protection insurance soared by more than a quarter, or £417million, to just over £2billion.
The upsurge came as PPI complaints jumped 40 per cent to hit a four-year high after the FCA announced a deadline of August 29 next year for people to lodge their claims. Banks and other finance firms were swamped with 1.55 million PPI-related gripes between July and December.
Christopher Woolard, executive director of strategy and competition at the FCA, said: “Having set a deadline for PPI complaints, we are encouraging consumers to decide whether they want to claim and, if they do, to make their complaint as soon as possible, as many already have.”
As many as 64million PPI policies have gROceRy giants Unilever and Nestle are struggling to get supermarkets to swallow price rises.
Unilever, who make Ben & Jerry’s ice cream, grew sales by 3.4 per cent in the first three months of this year.
But just 0.1 per cent of that came from raising prices, with the rest from volume – selling more products. KitKat-maker Nestle been sold in the UK, mostly between 1990 and 2010, but some as far back as the 70s.
PPI refunds reached just under £416million in January this year alone – the highest since March 2016 – taking the total paid out over time to a staggering £30billion.
While the total PPI bill rose in the second half of 2017, the average refund fell from £2500 to £2100.
PPI drove a 13 per cent rise in overall complaints about finance firms between last July and December.
The 3.76million total tally was up by 427,032 from the first half.
After PPI, the most complained about products were current accounts, with more than 500,000 gripes, and credit cards, with over 314,500. reported the same, with only 0.2 per cent of their 2.8 per cent growth coming from higher prices. Unilever used their update to try to downplay the threat of a shareholder revolt over plans for a headquarters shake-up. The anglo-Dutch firm want to ditch their UK HQ and have just one, in Rotterdam, instead. internet is that there are taxes that other retailers pay that they don’t.
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