Banks face £33billion bill in new mis-selling scandal

BRITAIN’S biggest banks face a compensation bill of up to £33billion for failing to disclose the lucrative commission payments they received to sell PPI policies.

Fears of yet another financial scandal have emerged after a customer who bought payment protection insurance almost a decade ago won a landmark ruling in the Supreme Court.

Consumer campaigners said last night that banks could be deluged with new complaints, while millions of customers who have seen their PPI complaint rejected may now be owed compensation.

Susan Plevin, a widowed college lecturer, was not told £4,150 of the £5,780 she handed over in PPI premiums was commission paid to the lender, Paragon Financial Services, and the broker that sold her the £34,000 loan.

The court ruled in November that this breached the 1974 Consumer Credit Act.

Britain’s biggest banks, which pocketed big commissions for selling PPI policies through branches or paid brokers to sell their products, are braced for another huge compensa-

‘Racketeering for decades’

tion bill. A recent study by Autonomous Research, chaired by former City minister Lord Myners, warned that they could have to pay out another £33billion to customers if the court ruling was applied across the industry.

It said: ‘In essence this ruling appears to open up a new angle for PPI mis- selling claims, based on commission payment.

‘If applied to other products (for example store cards and car finance), this case could lead to a whole new wave of consumer claims for the banks, with a bill that could be even higher than the PPI tally.’

Almost £27billion has been set aside so far by the high street giants for PPI – making it the most expensive mis-selling scandal to ever hit the UK.

City watchdog the Financial Conduct Authority has said it is reviewing the implications of the case and is expected to make an announcement next month.

The UK’s ‘ big four’ lenders – Barclays, HSBC, Royal Bank of Scotland and Lloyds – have all warned shareholders and referred to the legal case in their latest financial results.

HSBC said there is a ‘ high degree of uncertainty as to the eventual costs of redress’, while RBS, Lloyds and Barclays say the impact could be ‘material’.

Lloyds, which owns Halifax and Bank of Scotland, could face the biggest hit. The state-backed giant has set aside more than £13billion so far to compensate customers for PPI – far more than anyone else.

Martin Lewis, founder of the Money Savings Expert financial advice website, said: ‘There are hundreds of thousands, if not millions of people who have already complained about PPI and been rejected who may actually be due their money back.

‘This case adds to that – with even more people brought into the mis-selling net.’

Ukip MP Douglas Carswell said: ‘The behaviour of banks is shocking. They give capitalism a bad name. They have behaved like a cartel guilty of racketeering at the expense of the customer for dec- ades.’ Banks and other financial services companies sold around 45million PPI policies between 1990 and 2010. They were sold alongside loans and credit cards and were meant to be a safety net for customers who lost their jobs or became too ill to work.

But because it was so lucrative for banks, PPI was routinely sold to customers who would never have been able to claim on the insurance, such as the elderly and the self-employed.

Often, pushy salesmen sold the insurance as a condition of the loan or added it to the cost of the loan without the customer knowing. Regulators estimated that banks raked in between £2.2billion and £2.6 billion a year from PPI, and could earn £1,200 from a policy that cost £20 to provide.

One banking source said banks have been consulting lawyers to see whether the Plevin v Paragon Personal Finance case sets a legal precedent. He added that lenders are likely to challenge any decision by the regulator to force them to pay out more compensation if commission payments were not disclosed to customers.

Banks fear claims management firms will see this as another money-making opportunity and bombard customers with more spam text messages encouraging them to seek compensation.

Comment – Page 14

‘Money-making opportunity’