It’s the season when UK banks and lenders have to advise the city, and their shareholders, of their quarterly figures.
This also means that we can pretty much guarantee that the PPI bill, which is now well above the initial estimation of £25 BILLION, will be added to.
Earlier this week, the Lloyds Banking Group (which includes Halifax, Bank of Scotland and Blackhorse) confirmed they were adding a huge £900 MILLION, taking it’s bill to £11.3 BILLION.
Tesco soon following suit, adding £27 MILLION to it’s pot.
Next up, it’s the turn of Barclays.
Not long ago, three months in fact, the Barclays PPI compensation fund saw £900 MILLION added to it. Surely this astronomical amount of money would see the bank not have to add anymore for a while? WRONG!
Yesterday Barclays announced, in addition to £500 MILLION it has to pay for rigging foreign exchange rates, it’s was adding a further £170 MILLION to it’s Barclays PPI compensation fund.
This figure sees the total PPI bill in the last few days, increase by close to £1.1 BILLION, with the likes of HSBC, Royal Bank of Scotland, Natwest, Santander and the rest still yet to make their announcements.
In the last round of additions, three months ago, the bill increased by £3 BILLION. Whilst we don’t expect it to increase by quite that amount this time, our bet is that £2 BILLION will be added to the ever increasing compensation pot.
It’s simple really, the banks cannot put aside what they truly believe it will cost in one go as the negative impact this would have on it’s share price could potentially be catastrophic.
So, what do they do?…
Banks increase their PPI bills steadily, so as to still attempt to report a profit. This keeps shareholders happy, and perhaps more importantly, oblivious to what the actual final cost will be.
Add into that mix, the odd occasion when a bank may not add to it’s fund, such as Lloyds did earlier this year, and this sends so called expert analysts into a spin, making incorrect predictions that the PPI scandal is almost at an end!
It’s now clear that the banks initial estimation that the final bill would be £25 BILLION, was well short of what it actually will cost. Our figures suggest a bill closer to £42.5 BILLION, but this is dependant on two things happening…
When the PPI scandal first broke, making a claim was laborious and time-consuming, but thankfully times have changed and now it couldn’t be easier.
Your Money Claim are the industry experts when it comes to making PPI claims, and Packaged Bank Account claims.
Don’t worry if you’re unsure whether you’ve had PPI, if you don’t have any paperwork, or even if you can’t remember your account numbers.
Our fast-track systems set up with almost all banks and lenders allows us to check whether you’ve had PPI, and whether you may qualify to make a claim.
What’s more, checks are free!
So, what’s to lose? Simply fill in our online form which can be found on any page, download a pack, or chat with one of our experts on the phone, via email or using our online chat facility.
Your Money Claim, fighting your corner, and beating the banks every day.
...We now know that during the 1990s and 2000s that our banks and other financial institutions were mis-selling Payment Protection Insurance (PPI) on an enormous scale.
Banks were shockingly selling this insurance to customers, not for the benefit of the customer, but for the benefit of the bank, such were the astronomical profits in selling what, in many instances, was a useless product.
Whilst the insurance was designed to cover repayments in the event of accident, sickness or redundancy, a shockingly high number of consumers found that when they attempted to make a claim they were not eligible, thus rendering the insurance useless.
CitiFinancial are one of a long list of culprits and, if you ever received financial assistance from CitiFinancial, this article could help you make a Citi PPI claim.
CitiFinancial is part of Citigroup Inc. or “Citi” as it is often referred to.
Citi is an American financial services corporation, headquartered in New York. CitiFinancial were, until recently, responsible for handling Citi’s loans.
Today, CitiFinancial no longer provide this service and responsibility for existing loans has been transferred to a third party.
However, there were hundreds of thousands of customers who arranged loans through CitiFinancial during the period when the malpractice of mis-selling PPI was commonplace.
Undoubtedly, therefore, there are many thousands of customers who are victims of PPI mis-selling and deserve compensation.
If you thought that when news of this PPI scandal broke, that banks readily compensated their customers, you are wrong!
As discussed by the BBC, very few banks have “played ball” with those customers making claims for compensation, and CitiFinancial are no different.
The Financial Ombudsman Service (FOS) are responsible for settling disputes between banks and their customers claiming PPI, if agreement cannot be reached between the customer and the bank.
In 2012, the FOS were receiving PPI complaints at a rate of 400 every hour, and are still receiving over 5000 a week today!
Of the claims initially rejected by Citi, where the claimant chose to appeal to the FOS, a shocking 93% were found in favour of the customer. For this reason, you should not take “no” for an answer.
If you think you may have been mis-sold PPI by CitiFinancial, then Your Money Claim can help you to make a successful Citi PPI claim.
Our fast track system means we can gather all the information relating to your accounts and decide whether or not you may have a Citi PPI claim.
You do not need to provide any paperwork, or even remember your account numbers in order to make a PPI claim – we’ve made it easy!
So start your Citi PPI claim today by completing our easy online claim form, or downloading a pack.
Our expert advisers can be contacted by phone, email or our live chat to answer any queries you may have.
...You may have noticed that our, once all-powerful, supermarket giant, Tesco have recently been in the news for all the wrong reasons regarding their mis-calculation of profits.
As if things couldn’t get worse for the struggling grocer, they have released new figures stating that their banking arm is to increase the Tesco PPI bill by £27 MILLION.
Now, who out there were surprised that Tesco, of all companies, had mis-sold PPI to it’s customers?!
It would appear that all of the high street supermarkets, from Sainsbury’s to Asda, have also been mis-selling PPI in order to generate even more profit for their shareholders to enjoy.
Over recent years Tesco has been involved in their fair share of scandals.
From horsing around with their meat products, to recently having to sell it’s £35 million luxury private jet. What exactly does a supermarket do with a private jet? Home deliveries perhaps?
This latest indication of Tesco’s involvement in the biggest financial scandal will do no favours for it’s plummeting reputation. The lure of the huge profits on offer for selling PPI was obviously too tempting for the greedy Tesco bosses.
Mis-selling PPI meant that Tesco would get a few more million in their pockets every year… as they say ‘every little helps’, helps themselves!
Tesco have a reputation for being ‘bigger and better’, or should I say they once had that reputation?
Reputations are easily damaged and over these past few months Tesco released a profit figure from January 2014 – June 2014, which was overstated by £263 million!
With recent profits being realised, it has come to the attention that Tesco bank has experienced a 23.6% fall in pre-tax profits down to less than £100 million, after they took a £27 million hit for refunding PPI compensation. However, underlying profits before tax are up 18.4% and income has increased by 10.7%, due to strong leading growth, according to Tesco’s latest results.
The experts are on hand to help.
Download our free claims pack today… or request one to be posted to you!
We don’t need account numbers or paperwork. As on a daily basis we deal with the banks, so you don’t have to.
What are you waiting for?!
...The Payment Protection Insurance (PPI) scandal is far from finished; there are 7 million of the banks’ greed that are yet to be compensated. These insurance policies were intended to cover loan repayments should a customers fall ill or lose their job. However, all too often, they were sold to people who would be ineligible to claim. If you have used the financial services of the Bank of Scotland in the last twenty years, this article will be of particular interest to you.
Firstly, the Bank of Scotland should not be confused with the Royal Bank of Scotland; these are two very separate banks (although both are guilty of mis-selling PPI).
The Bank of Scotland, headquartered in Edinburgh, was formed in 1696. During the practice of PPI mis-selling in the 1990s and 2000s, the Bank of Scotland held different identities.
In 2001, the Bank of Scotland merged with the Halifax Bank to form Halifax Bank of Scotland (HBOS). Later, in 2008, HBOS was then bought by the Lloyds Banking Group who are now the parent company to HBOS.
According to the Daily Mail, there were 202,617 PPI complaints made against HBOS in the first half of 2014. This is a huge number when you consider that it is several years after the bank’s scandalous behaviour was first revealed.
As if the reputation of the UK’s banks could not get any worse, not only has PPI been mis-sold to customers, the banks are now wrongly dismissing claims by customers for compensation.
Sky News reported that of the many hundreds of thousands of disputes heard by the Financial Ombudsman Service, 80% of those that involved the Bank of Scotland (HBOS) were found in the customer’s favour.
That means 80% of decisions by the Bank of Scotland (HBOS) to reject customers’ grievances are wrong and doesn’t include the many cases where they have already admitted guilt. With this in mind, do not take “no” for an answer.
The Lloyds Banking Group, the parent company of the Bank of Scotland (HBOS), was actually fined £4.3m in 2013 for delaying payments of compensation to the 140,000 of their customers (including Bank of Scotland customers) who were mis-sold PPI. Do not expect the Bank of Scotland to make a PPI claim easy for you. Luckily, that is exactly what we can offer!
Do you think you may have been sold PPI by the Bank of Scotland (HBOS)?
Our fast track system allows us to gather all the information relating to your bank accounts and determine whether or not you may have a Bank of Scotland PPI claim.
You do not need to provide any paperwork in order to make a PPI claim; we have made the process easy for you!
So start your Bank of Scotland PPI claim today by completing our easy online claim form or by downloading a pack. Our experts advisers can be contacted by phone, email or live chat to answer any queries you may have.
...Payment Protection Insurance, often referred to as PPI, was sold to tens of millions of individuals in the UK over many years. There were many banks that were selling this ineffective insurance for the purposes of astronomically increasing their own profits.
We take a little look into the role played by Alliance & Leicester in what is now the biggest financial scandal to ever hit the UK and, most importantly, we discuss how you could make a Alliance & Leicester PPI claim.
Formed by the 1985 merger of Alliance Building Society and the Leicester Building Society, Alliance & Leicester was once a UK-based bank that operated in four business sectors: mortgage lending and investments, personal banking, commercial banking and treasury. In 2008, however, Alliance & Leicester was acquired by the Santander Group and transferred its business to Santander UK plc in May 2010.
PPI was sold throughout the 1990’s and well into the 2000’s. Public opposition and complaints regarding the efficacy of PPI began to surface in the early 2000’s and banks and lenders were ordered to stop selling the policies in 2010.
This 2004 article in the Guardian newspaper reports how Vince Cable, then Liberal Democrat Shadow Chancellor, urged the Office of Fair Trading to investigate, “the serious problems and inflated premiums and anti-competitive behaviour in the market for payments protection insurance.” Mr Cable considered that “there is a scandal lurking here” – and how right he was.
In 2005, the Financial Services Authority (FSA) was tasked with regulating the general insurance industry. A year later, the FSA began imposing fines for PPI mis-selling and, in 2008, they handed out their biggest fine regarding PPI of £7 MILLION, to Alliance & Leicester, for training its staff to “put pressure” on those customers that questioned the inclusion of PPI in their quotation. Customers who had no need for PPI were being wrongly persuaded otherwise.
Do you think you may have been sold PPI by Alliance & Leicester? Even though the bank itself no longer exists, you are able to bring a claim against Santander – you can still get justice.
Our fast track system means we can gather all the information relating to your bank accounts and decide whether or not you may have an Alliance & Leicester PPI claim. You do not need to provide any paperwork in order to make a PPI claim – we make it easy!
So start your Alliance & Leicester PPI claim today by completing our easy online claim form, found on every page, by downloading a pack. Our experts advisers can be contacted by phone, email or our live chat to answer any queries you may have.
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Earlier this year, in a previous announcement regarding it’s figures to the city, Lloyds decided not to add to their PPI compensation fund, prompting analysts to confidently predict it was the beginning of the end of the PPI scandal.
I disagreed with that prediction in my blog, pointing out that Lloyds were in the process of selling off a stake in TSB and that any negative news could negatively impact the share price.
I also predicted at that time that the Lloyds PPI compensation fund would increase by a minimum of £1 BILLION over the course of the following twelve months.
In May of this year, Lloyds announced they were adding a further £600 MILLION to the fund, taking it beyond the £10 BILLION mark.
Today, the bank have announced, along with 9,000 job cuts and 150 branch closures, that it has added a whopping £900 MILLION to it’s spiralling PPI compensation fund.
This sees the Lloyds Banking Group PPI bill, which includes Halifax, Bank of Scotland and Blackhorse, smash the £11 BILLION barrier, and puts an end to the prediction made by banks and lenders of a final bill of £25 BILLION.
Our estimations predict a final bill closer to £42.5 BILLION, but this depends largely on the estimated 7 MILLION people who have still yet to make a claim.
Whilst the majority of people who knew they had PPI have now made a claim, there are millions out there who have not.
The main reason for the estimated 7 million who have not yet stepped forward to make a claim, is that they are simply unaware they’ve been sold PPI.
PPI was added to 34 million policies, and one of the main reasons for a mis-sale is that these policies were added to mortgages, loans, hire purchase agreements, credit and store cards without the knowledge of the customer.
Your Money Claim are the experts, dealing with and beating banks on a daily basis.
We don’t need account numbers or paperwork. We deal direct with the bank and obtain the details so you don’t have to. What’s more, we do these checks for free.
Once we’ve established whether you’ve had PPI, we then launch the claims and deal with them at every step.
Simply fill in our online form which can be found on every page or download our pack.
If you have any questions, or want an update throughout the process, our expert team is on hand via telephone, email or our online chat facility.
So, let’s get started…!
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