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November 18, 2014 
Daniel Lee Marks & Spencer Money, the finance arm of the luxury supoermarket brand, yesterday announced the appointment of a new finance director.
Helen Weir will join the business from the John Lewis Partnership early next year, on a salary of almost £600,000 per year on top of a £188,500 lump sum sweetener.
It’s reasonable to assume then that Mrs Weir’s track record must be highly impressive in order to command such a salary.
Prior to joining the John Lewis Partnership, Helen Weir spent eight years working at the Lloyds Banking Group, with four of them being in the role of finance director.
The Lloyds Banking Group consists of many banks under one umbrella, with the likes of Halifax, Bank of Scotland, Blackhorse and of course, Lloyds, being the major players within that.
It’s therefore clear that the position held by Mrs Weir within the group between 2004-2008 was of great importance.
Now we are not for one moment suggesting that Mrs Weir was solely at fault for what was happening within the Lloyds Banking Group prior to the financial crash in 2008.
However, there can be no hiding from the fact that her decisions as finance director would have played some role in the near collapse of the Lloyds Banking Group, which led to the UK taxpayer bailing the bank out.
Furthermore, we cannot pin the blame entirely on Mrs Weir, for the mis-selling of PPI.
However, once again she played a part in the Lloyds Banking Group being the biggest culprit of the mis-selling of the often useless policies.
Indeed, Mrs Weir was forced to apologise for her actions during the height of the PPI mis-selling saga, when banks were systematically adding PPI to mortgages, loans, credit card and all sorts of other credit agreements, often without the knowledge of the customer.
Is this the type of person we should be looking to employ within our financial services industry?
Is this track record of putting profit before customer, and risking the future of the banking industry, to be rewarded with a salary over 20 times the average UK salary?
M&S Money have played their role in the mis-selling of PPI, as have the majority of banks and lenders.
Now is the time that such institutions need to be seen to be turning a new leaf, not hiring people on obscene money with a track record of destruction and manipulation.
People’s trust in the banking sector is at an all time low, and the continuing merry-go-round of top executives moving from one bank to another, is hardly going to restore banks ever dwindling reputations.
We’ve all been affected by the actions of banking executives in one way or another following the financial crisis.
However, and perhaps more concerning, there are many millions of us who have still to make a claim when the greed of the banks led to PPI being added to credit agreements.
Unsure whether you’ve had PPI?
Can’t remember your account numbers?
Unsure whether you qualify? Have a look at our checklist here.
Want to know how much you could be owed? Click here for our PPI calculator.
Your Money Claim have been fighting, and winning, cases against banks for years.
We don’t need account numbers or paperwork as our fast-track systems set up with almost all lenders can check whether you’ve had PPI on any of your agreements.
So why not fill in the online form, or contact us via telephone, email or our live chat facility, and let us see whether you’re one of the estimated 7 million people who may still have a PPI claim.
M&S announce new finance director
August 11, 2015 Daniel Lee Let’s face it, the PPI scandal seems to have been around for years doesn’t it?
If you haven’t received a spam call or text about it, where have you been?!
Whilst we’re on that subject, never ever deal with a company who uses such tactics as spam calls or texts. We’ve done a blog regarding this.
Anyway, back to the subject, firstly we need to take a little look back before we can predict how long has PPI got left.
How long has PPI been around? The first mumblings that something was very very wrong with the sale of PPI goes back to 1998.
However, the story didn’t really start to build until the mid to late 2000s following a report by the Office of Fair Trading in 2006.
From that moment complaints started to rise, but not enough for the media to grab hold of.
Complaints really started to rocket from late 2009, hitting a peak in 2012, and the number of complaints regarding the toxic product is still in the millions.
Simple really, the profits gained from selling the products were huge, and the banks couldn’t resist.
Because of the size of profits on offer lenders set bonus targets for their sales staff to hit, which in turn led to systematic mis-selling on a staggering scale.
Greed won over morals, as it tends to do with banks.
According to statistics released by the Financial Conduct Authority, £16.6 BILLION had been paid out on compensation by August of this year.
With the compensation pot sitting at over £22 BILLION from the big banks (Lloyds, Halifax, Bank of Scotland, RBS, Natwest, HSBC, Santander and Barclays), topped up to over £25 BILLION when we add into the mix the amount also set aside by smaller lenders, this leaves £8.4 BILLION still to be paid out.
The banks are currently averaging payouts of £371 MILLION per month.
This means that it will take lenders almost two years to pay out the remaining amount that is in the pot.
However, this isn’t the whole story.
The financial industry, in our opinion, have massively underestimated how much this will eventually cost them.
Their figures depend on the estimated 7 million people who have yet to make a claim not coming forward.
They also rely upon consumers accepting when they receive a rejection from the bank. For more about how banks have saved themselves £17 BILLION by rejecting valid complaints, please read our article here.
Our figures suggest a bill closer to £42.5 BILLION.
We do realise that not everyone who is entitled to claim will do, and unfortunately customers still accept rejections from banks.
Nevertheless, a final bill will more than likely be around £30 BILLION.
Given £16.6 BILLION has been paid out, and banks are averaging £371 MILLION per month in payouts, it will realistically take a further 3 years for this scandal of epic proportions to finally be over.
Did you honestly think that was it? The next scandal is upon us, and very much like PPI, it’s currently under the radar, but not for long.
Do you pay a monthly fee for your bank account, or have you in the past?
With 1 in 5 of us currently paying for a Packaged Bank Account, in exchange for various ‘perks’, it’s becoming clear that banks have been at it again.
Not sure whether you’ve been sold PPI? Our fast and comprehensive checking systems that have been set up with almost all lenders, allows you to find out whether you’ve been one of the millions who have had PPI.
Not sure whether you qualify for PPI compensation? Check here to see whether you may.
Want to know how much you may be owed? Why not try our PPI calculator.
Do you pay a monthly fee fore your bank account? Check here to see whether you may qualify for compensation.
#1: The first option for you is to fill in the form which can be seen on every page. By doing so, we will send you out a form in the post for you to complete. Once we’ve received the form back in the freepost envelope we send you with your form, we can make a start on your PPI claim.
#2: The second option for you is to download our form, which again can be found on every page by clicking the ‘download pack’ button. Simply print it out, complete it and send it back to us, our address can be found here. Once we receive is back we’ll let you know and make a start.
Our team of experts are on hand to answer any questions you have via telephone, email or our live chat facility.
So….why wait, let’s get started!
How long has PPI got left?
November 14, 2014 Daniel Lee Yorkshire Bank is a commercial bank operating in England and Wales.
It is a division of Clydesdale Bank, which is a subsidiary of National Australia Bank.
Founded in 1859 by Colonel Edward Akroyd of Halifax the bank, headquartered in Leeds, originally operated on a non-profit making basis.
Unfortunately, this benevolent approach to banking did not last and indeed it was Yorkshire Bank‘s thirst for profits that led it to mis-sell PPI to their customers in the 1990’s and 2000’s.
Yorkshire Bank has been the subject of investigations by the Financial Services Authority (now the Financial Conduct Authority), for a host of reasons.
As reported in The Telegraph in 2012, Yorkshire Bank was accused of “unwarranted and misguided aggression” for demanding their customer repay a £5 million loan after he complained about being mis-sold an interest rate swap.
This second article in The Telegraph states that Yorkshire Bank are the main lenders to face claims over mis-selling fixed-rate loans.
As for PPI mis-selling, National Australia Bank (owners of Yorkshire Bank) have set aside over £1.2 billion at the time of writing this, with a whopping £420 million added within the last two months.
It appears that National Australia Bank have had enough of being linked to the two toxic banks that are Clydesdale and Yorskhire, recently announcing of their intention to dispose of them both.
If you have had a loan, mortgage or credit card with Yorkshire Bank within the last 25 years there’s every chance you’ll have been paying for PPI.
We’ve made claiming easy, taking the stress out of you having to deal with the paperwork, the stress, and the tactics employed by the bank to try and wriggle out of paying.
So….how do you start your claim?
#1: The first option for you is to fill in the form which can be seen on every page. By doing so, we will send you out a form in the post for you to complete. Once we’ve received the form back in the freepost envelope we send you with your form, we can make a start on your Yorkshire Bank PPI claim.
#2: The second option for you is to download our form, which again can be found on every page by clicking the ‘download pack’ button. Simply print it out, complete it and send it back to us, our address can be found here. Once we receive is back we’ll let you know and make a start.
Our team of experts are on hand to answer any questions you have via telephone, email or our live chat facility.
So….why wait, let’s get started!
Yorkshire Bank PPI claim
November 13, 2014 Daniel Lee Marks & Spencer was founded in 1884 in Leeds by Michael Marks and Thomas Spencer.
It’s widely known as a retailer of clothes, luxury food and home products, but in 1985 it began financial service operations.
Starting with the M&S Chargecard in 1985, Marks & Spencer began offering personal loans in 1989 and ISA accounts in 1999.
The trading name of Marks & Spencer Financial Services plc is M&S Bank.
More recently M&S Bank started providing customers with savings accounts, and have partnered with banking giant HSBC.
Customers of M&S Bank have been receiving compensation for another type of mis-sold insurance, as well as PPI!
An extra insurance policy provided by the insurance company CPP was sold by a variety of banks.
In the case of M&S Bank, this policy was known as ‘Card Safe’.
These extra policies were a complete waste of money as it added nothing to the insurance already provided by the banks.
As reported in The Telegraph newspaper, up to 7 million people have been paying for this useless insurance and the banks have been ordered to pay out around £1.3 billion in compensation.
Added to this is the huge amount of compensation owed to Marks & Spencer’s customers for the mis-selling of PPI.
This 2012 article reports that the PPI scandal is expected to cost Marks & Spencer’s banking arm £52 million!
If you have had a loan or credit card with Marks and Spencer within the last 25 years there’s every chance you’ll have been paying for PPI.
We’ve made claiming easy, taking the stress out of you having to deal with the paperwork, the stress, and the tactics employed by the bank to try and wriggle out of paying.
So….how do you start your claim?
#1: The first option for you is to fill in the form which can be seen on every page. By doing so, we will send you out a form in the post for you to complete. Once we’ve received the form back in the freepost envelope we send you with your form, we can make a start on your Marks and Spencer PPI claim.
#2: The second option for you is to download our form, which again can be found on every page by clicking the ‘download pack’ button. Simply print it out, complete it and send it back to us, our address can be found here. Once we receive is back we’ll let you know and make a start.
Our team of experts are on hand to answer any questions you have via telephone, email or our live chat facility.
So….why wait, let’s get started!
Marks and Spencer PPI claim
August 11, 2015 Daniel Lee Since the financial crises took hold around 6 years ago there appears to have been scandal after scandal involving the banking industry.
The Guardian has today issued some staggering figures regarding just how much bank fines and compensation payments have been made by the major banks in this time.
A headline figure of £166 BILLION appears huge, and when broken down it still remains a phenomenal £76 MILLION per day on average.
However, when banks are reporting global profits of £583 BILLION in the last year it’s hardly the biggest deterrent.
The most recent scandal to break was just yesterday when banks were fined for their part in rigging the £3 TRILLION a day foreign exchange market.
Prior to that we’ve had the manipulation of LIBOR, which determines the interest rates to which countless credit agreements are set to.
Add to that mix, Money Laundering with Mexican drug barons, dealing with rogue states that are under international sanctions, selling toxic bonds and securities, fixing gold prices and the list goes on.
Would any other industry or business be allowed to continue following such behaviour?
The banking industry appears to be a law unto themselves, and governments and regulators across the globe are too scared to act properly.
Closer to home, although we have all been affected by the scandals above, mainly indirectly, almost all of us will have felt the force of the greed of the banks directly.
The biggest financial scandal ever to hit the UK is the huge PPI mis-selling scandal.
With 34 million policies worth £50 BILLION sold, it’s safe to say that this still has a long way before the estimated 7 million who haven’t yet staked a claim do so, and they are paid what is owed to them.
Moving on from PPI and there is a new scandal in town, the Packaged Bank Account mis-selling scandal.
Again, affecting more than 1 in 5, and estimated to be worth £BILLIONS, this is going to be the next big news.
Not sure whether you’ve been sold PPI? Our fast and comprehensive checking systems that have been set up with almost all banks, allows you to find out whether you’ve been one of the millions who have had PPI.
Not sure whether you qualify for PPI compensation? Check here to see whether you may.
Want to know how much you may be owed? Why not try our PPI calculator.
Do you pay a monthly fee fore your bank account? Check here to see whether you may qualify for compensation.
#1: The first option for you is to fill in the form which can be seen on every page. By doing so, we will send you out a form in the post for you to complete. Once we’ve received the form back in the freepost envelope we send you with your form, we can make a start on your PPI claim.
#2: The second option for you is to download our form, which again can be found on every page by clicking the ‘download pack’ button. Simply print it out, complete it and send it back to us, our address can be found here. Once we receive is back we’ll let you know and make a start.
Our team of experts are on hand to answer any questions you have via telephone, email or our live chat facility.
So….why wait, let’s get started!
Bank fines and compensation
November 12, 2014 Daniel Lee Under its full name, Liverpool Victoria Friendly Society Limited was founded in 1843.
For many years Liverpool Victoria’s was associated with “penny policies” – a service that provided a means of saving for people on a lower income.
Today Liverpool Victoria, or LV= as it is branded, offers customers insurance, investment and retirement products. It has offices across the UK with headquarters in Bournemouth.
In 1999, Liverpool Victoria were fined a record (at the time) £900,000 by the Personal Investment Authority (PIA).
The PIA used to be responsible for regulating companies who conducted investment business with private investors in the financial services market.
This record fine was imposed for a number of reasons, including Liverpool Victoria’s failure to recommended suitable products to customers, not checking that salesmen were of “good character” and failing to keep proper records.
As reported in this Guardian newspaper article, Liverpool Victoria’s group chief executive admitted “This has been a difficult and painful period”. As many as 50,000 of Liverpool Victoria’s customers were due compensation, which totalled in the region of £10 million!
A decade later and it seems that Liverpool Victoria were making the same mistakes.
In July 2008 they were fined £840,000 by the Financial Services Authority (FSA) for “serious failings” in the way it sold PPI.
The FSA (now the FCA) are responsible for regulating the general insurance industry in the UK and the watchdog found more than 60% of the 97 sales calls they reviewed didn’t comply with their standards.
As reported in the Guardian, the FSA discovered that Liverpool Victoria added the cost of PPI to customers’ premiums without them asking for it.
When customers questioned the PPI and objected to paying for it, Liverpool Victoria’s staff were guilty of putting pressure on customers to take out the PPI.
If you have had a loan, mortgage, or credit card with Liverpool Victoria within the last 25 years there’s every chance you’ll have been paying for PPI.
We’ve made claiming easy, taking the stress out of you having to deal with the paperwork, the stress, and the tactics employed by the bank to try and wriggle out of paying.
So….how do you start your claim?
#1: The first option for you is to fill in the form which can be seen on every page. By doing so, we will send you out a form in the post for you to complete. Once we’ve received the form back in the freepost envelope we send you with your form, we can make a start on your Liverpool Victoria PPI claim.
#2: The second option for you is to download our form, which again can be found on every page by clicking the ‘download pack’ button. Simply print it out, complete it and send it back to us, our address can be found here. Once we receive is back we’ll let you know and make a start.
Our team of experts are on hand to answer any questions you have via telephone, email or our live chat facility.
So….why wait, let’s get started!
Liverpool Victoria PPI Claim
