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October 23, 2014 
Daniel Lee As a result of the merger between two North East building societies, the Northern Counties Permanent Building Society and the Rock Building society, both of which were established in the 1800s, Northern Rock Building Society was formed in 1965.
Northern Rock expanded in the next 30 years by acquiring 53 smaller building societies and most notably, in 1994 they got the North of England Building Society.
Also during the 1990s, they chose to demutualise and float on the stock exchange in order to be able to expand their business more easily. This led to them being able to gain promotion to the FTSE 100 index in the year 2000 but they were quickly demoted back to the FTSE 250 in December of 2007.
Pardon the pun but the bank fell upon hard times and during the financial crisis in 2007, they sought and received a liquidity support facility from the Bank of England after experiencing problems in the credit market.
The bank was nationalised in February 2008 as a result of two unsuccessful bids to take the bank over with neither being able to full commit to repayment of taxpayers’ money. Thanks to this, the Government took ownership away from shareholders without reimbursement.
In January 2010, the bank was split into two parts; assets and banking. In June 2011 the bank was officially put up for sale and in November 2011 it was announced that Virgin Money would be buying Northern Rock for £747 million up front with further payments of £280 million. The sale went through on January 1st, 2012 and in October of that year, Northern Rock plc was renamed Virgin Money plc.
Having had their fair share of troubles in the last few years you’d be forgiven thinking that they couldn’t go through anything else. Well, if you’re aware of the scale of the PPI mis-selling scandal, you won’t be surprised to learn that Northern Rock are just as guilty as the other lenders involved in the Payment Protection Insurance scandal.
Not only are they guilty of mis-selling payment protection insurance, in 2010 two former directors of Northern Rock were fined by the Financial Services Authority and banned from working for a regulated financial firm again.
Former deputy chief executive, David Baker was fined £504,000 for misreporting mortgage arrears data, and the former credit director Richard Barclay was fined £140,000 for also failing to ensure accurate financial information.
The two fines that were received by both former employees were reduced as they were both cooperative and admitted to their misconduct among other factors. The fine received by Mr Baker was cut from £720,000 but it is still one of the biggest individual fines levied by the regulator. Mr Barclay faced a £300,000 fine but this was slashed to the £140,000 he eventually received.
Although they’re not at the same level as the likes of Barclays, Lloyds and Santander who have all set aside billions to cover their costs for their part in the PPI scandal, Northern Rock still have millions that they need to pay out.
The holding company for any Northern Rock PPI claims and liabilities, NRAM (Northern Rock Asset Management) claim that they have attempted to contact every single customer that has been affected by the PPI mis-selling. This is akin to asking a burglar to contact their victim to ask if they want their stolen belongings back! So far as we are concerned, it should never have been left to NRAM to contact customers, it should have been the regulator who contacted them.
Are you sat reading this now thinking that you haven’t been contacted at all, or you’ve moved house yet you still haven’t been contacted?
You are far from being alone, we hear from Northern Rock customers regularly who haven’t received any contact, from NRAM.
There are approximately still 7 million people out there who haven’t made a claim against mis-sold PPI. You could be one that is owed thousands so why not start your claim today and leave the hard work to us?
Northern Rock PPI
October 23, 2014 Daniel Lee A UK based bank and former building society, Abbey National’s history goes way back to 1874 when the Abbey Road & St. John’s Wood Permanent Benefit Building Society was founded and was based on Abbey Road in Kilburn.
The society moved to a new headquarters in 1932 when they took up residence in abbey House at 219-229 Baker Street which they occupied until 2002.
An interesting fact is that Abbey employed a secretary whose sole job was to answer the mail that was sent to the address for Sherlock Holmes. This is because his fictional address was of course, 221B Baker Street.
The Abbey National Building Society was actually formed in 1944 when Abbey Road Building Society and the National Building Society merged. During the 1970s and 80s, Abbey National gained a reputation for innovation.
Abbey National was a very early user of computer systems and in the late 1970s, all of their branches moved on-line to a real-time system which maintained customer accounts. Under their Chief General Manager, Clive Thornton they introduced a new cheque account and a new type of savings account.
In July 2004, Abbey National plc and Banco Santander Central Hispano announced that they had reached an agreement on the terms of a recommended acquisition by Santander of Abbey. The deal was approved by the courts and Abbey became a part of the Santander group on November 12th 2004.
Abbey were fined £800,000 in 2005 for throwing out complaints from customers who should have received compensation after they were found to have been mishandling mortgage endowment complaints.
Another huge scandal hit not only Abbey, but the whole of the banking industry, is the mis-selling of Payment Protection Insurance. As part of the Santander Group, Abbey PPI claims equate to a significant percentage of the £1+ billion currently set aside by Santander to cover their costs for compensating customers. This bill continues to rise regularly when Santander release their figures to the city.
It couldn’t be simpler for you to launch your Abbey PPI claim with us today.
As Abbey were responsible for 6% of the PPI market and there were over 34 million PPI policies sold, that’s over 2,000,000 Abbey customers who could be owed.
In order to start the ball rolling, so to speak, you simply have to complete the online form to the right of the page and we’ll send you our PPI form out. It takes no longer than two minutes of your time, we don’t even need account numbers. Once we have it back we make a start on your claim and keep you updated every step of the way.
Abbey National PPI Claim
August 11, 2015 Daniel Lee For those of you that don’t know, the FOS or the Financial Ombudsman Service is a service that was established in 2001 as a result of the Financial Services and Markets Act 2000. The aim of the service was to help settle disputes between consumers and UK businesses that provided financial services such as banks, building societies, insurance companies, investment firms and so the list goes on.
Earlier this week, the FOS released their latest figures and they show that PPI is still topping the list of complaints.
So, how does a complaint end up with the FOS? Basically, if consumers receive a rejection to a complaint that they’re not happy with, the FOS can take the complaint and look at it independently.
Two thirds of new complaints that were made to the FOS during the second quarter f the 2014/15 financial year were about PPI. So far this year, more than half of the PPI cases that have made it to the Financial Ombudsman Service have been upheld in favour of the consumer. The fact that over half of complaints are still being rejected unfairly by banks is further proof of the industry not treating it’s customers fairly, and attempting to wriggle out of paying compensation.
It’s also come as no surprise to us that packaged bank accounts were the second most complained about product with over 7,000 new complaints received in the same period.
The FOS handled over 157,000 cases during the second quarter of the financial year and of these 157,000, 88,000 were new cases.
It’s not a surprise that PPI is still top of the list when it comes to the most complained about financial products. The total amount of PPI compensation that has been paid out so far is £16 billion and the banks have estimated that the final bill is set to reach £25 billion.
As has been proven in the past, the banks can’t really be trusted and our experts have worked out that the total PPI bill should in fact be closer to a staggering £42.5 billion. We’ve calculated this by taking figures that are available to the public through the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) and with some simple maths; we’ve found that the banks are continuing to lie to the public.
As far as the packaged bank account complaints go, we expect this to rise even more in the not so distant future. We expect the compensation payout bill for the banks will run into £BILLIONS given the success rate of claims made to date both via banks and through the Financial Ombudsman Service.
Have you been mis-sold a Packaged Bank Account or PPI? Maybe you’re unsure, or maybe you can’t remember your account details. Don’t worry, we don’t actually need any account details as we can obtain these direct with your bank or lender.
We’ve claimed back thousands of pounds for thousands of our customers and you could be next.
Start your claim with us, the compensation claims experts, today and you could be a stone’s throw away from reclaiming thousands of pounds.
PPI Complaints
June 8, 2015 Daniel Lee Bank accounts; almost everyone has one. They’re almost a staple requirement in everyday life with people needing them so that they can get paid from their job, to make direct debit payments and so the list goes on.
Well, after the launch of a new switching initiative last year, over 1.2 million people have switched their current accounts from one bank or building society to another.
The new scheme that was launched was meant to make switching easier for customers and it would seem that there are two banks that are benefitting from this new service.
The free “current account switch service” went live in September of last year and the first lot of data has been released by the Payments Council.
The data shows that from October 1st 2013 to September 30 2014, a total of 1,203,334 switches took place which is a 22% increase on the 985,600 current accounts which were switched during the previous 12 months.
There are two banks that benefitted the most from this are Halifax and Santander. The Spanish owned bank, Santander from January 1st to March 31st 2014, gained 60,882 new accounts but the lost 23,566 and it was a similar story for the other big winner, Halifax. They gained 65,636 new accounts but lost 24,078.
There are three banks who took quite a beating when it comes to the accounts gained and the accounts lost. Lloyds notched up quite a big amount of new accounts with 60,877 joining them but the fact that 76,079 left them renders their gains useless.
The Co-operative Bank are trying to regain the trust of the general public with their products and services being caught up in a large scandal last year they only gained a total of 4,463 new accounts but lost many, many more than that; 12,315.
Finally, there were two major losers in this period. Two of the larger banks in this country, two banks who can’t afford to keep making losses after their fines for mis-selling PPI. They are Barclays and NatWest.
Barclays gained 10,947 new accounts but they lost almost three times that amount with 27,414 leaving them and it wasn’t any better for NatWest who gained 11,482 new accounts but saw 29,740 customers leave them.
There are some very obvious pros to having a bank account. Some of which we mentioned earlier like being able to pay direct debits, you get paid into them. It’s a safe way of handling your money and you can see all of your incomings and outgoings.
Well, there are also some not so obvious cons to having a bank account. For example, are you paying a monthly fee for your account? Well, we estimate that a majority of packaged bank accounts have been mis-sold.
If you don’t know what a packaged bank account is, then it’s worth doing a bit of reading if you’re looking at switching your account as bank staff are known to be pushy when it comes to selling these accounts.
They will try and sell you the benefits, more often than not they include ‘free’ breakdown cover, ‘free’ mobile phone insurance to name just a couple. The cost for these accounts depends on the one that you opt for and the bank that you’re with as it can range from a small monthly fee of £5 or can be as much as £30 a month.
Other things to look out for are being told that getting one of these accounts can help you to get a mortgage in the future. This isn’t true at all and it counts as mis-selling.
So, if after reading this you didn’t know that there were other options for a current account or if you were told that you would stand a better chance of getting a mortgage in future with one of these accounts or if you quite simply weren’t aware that you were paying a monthly fee for your bank account, why wait around?
Start your claim with the experts today, just fill in the form on this page and we’ll launch your packaged bank account claim today.
Packaged Bank Account Claims
October 23, 2014 Daniel Lee Originally referred to as the “New Bank” but in 1727 became known as the Royal Bank of Scotland and in May 1728, the Royal Bank of Scotland invented the overdraft which is still considered to be an innovation in modern banking.
The bank opened its first branch office outside of Edinburgh in 1783 when they opened up a branch in Glasgow. In the first part of the 19th century, branches opened up quickly in other places around Scotland such as Dundee, Greenock and Port Glasgow. Soon after this, the first London branch followed which was opened up in 1874 but their expansion in to England was put on hold until after World War I.
They acquired a number of small English banks after the First World War including London-based Drummonds Bank in 1924 and Williams Deacon’s Bank in 1930 to name just a couple and they started re-branding these banks to the Royal Bank of Scotland in 1985.
They haven’t been entirely fair in recent years to their customers, most notably in 2011 when they prevented their ‘Basic’ account holders from using ATMs of most of their rivals. They were still able to use NatWest, Tesco, Morrisons and the Post Office ATMs though.
Things didn’t get much better though, in 2012 there were a series of computer issues which prevented their customers from accessing their accounts too.
This is only scratching the surface though as far as RBS are concerned. Just like the majority of the banks and lenders in this country, they’re guilty as charged when it comes to mis-sold PPI. The Royal Bank of Scotland Group which consists of the Royal Bank of Scotland, NatWest Bank, Drummonds Bank, Ulster Bank and Coutts has set aside an enormous £3 billion in order to cover themselves for their part in the PPI scandal.
On top of the staggering £3 billion they’ve already set aside, they were fined £14.5m for their false advice over mortgages in August this year. On top of this, they’ve been fixing Libor rates and have also received a £390 million fine for their part in the Libor rate-fixing scandal; hardly advocates of good behaviour.
The big problem for RBS is the PPI scandal. Still on-going and with a big pot of money to pay customers out of, they will be hoping that it all blows over soon but we won’t let something like this go away that easily.
We’ve dealt with thousands of claims for our customers from Barclays to HSBC, Halifax to RBS, we’ve covered them all the way down to the likes of mis-sold Marks and Spencer PPI and Liverpool Victoria PPI.
Have you had a loan, mortgage or credit card from RBS? If you’ve lost your paperwork, thrown it out or just no longer have access to it that doesn’t matter, we can still launch your RBS PPI claim. You just need to fill in the claim form to the right hand side of this page and leave the rest up to us.
RBS PPI Claims
October 23, 2014 Daniel Lee Lloyds Banking Group is a major British financial institution which was formed through the acquisition of HBOS by Lloyds TSB in 2009. HBOS is the holding company for Bank of Scotland plc which operates both the Bank of Scotland and Halifax brands in the UK as well as HBOS Australia and HBOS Insurance & Investment Group Limited which is the group’s insurance division.
HBOS was formed in 2001 by the merger of Halifax and the Bank of Scotland and this formation was, at the time, considered a great thing. It was thought that a fifth force in British banking was created.
The group’s history goes way back to 1765 when Lloyds Bank was founded. Their activities are organised into retail banking which includes mortgages and sole traders, commercial, life, pensions & insurance and finally wealth & international; a wide range of services.
Being the fourth oldest bank in the United Kingdom, it shouldn’t come as any surprise to you that they have extensive operations overseas in the US, Europe, the Middle East and Asia, they’ve had plenty of time to build up the relationships.
In 1995, Lloyds Bank merged with TSB, or the Trustee Savings Bank which then formed Lloyds TSB and in 2000 the group acquired Scottish Widows, a mutual life-assurance company based in Edinburgh. The deal totalled £7 billion which meant that the group became the second largest provider in the UK of life assurance and pensions after Prudential.
The deal to complete the takeover of HBOS by Lloyds TSB was concluded in September 2008 which meant that a banking giant would be born that held over a third of UK mortgages. However, it was only in January 2009 when Lloyds TSB Group changed their name to Lloyds Banking Group.
Lloyds banking group are no strangers when it comes to receiving fines and being a bit naughty when it comes to the regulators. Indeed, the Lloyds Banking Group PPI compensation pot dwarfs the rest of the UK banks, taking up 40% of the total bill so far of £25 BILLION.
In August this year, whilst they were in the midst of being fined for the mis-selling of PPI, they were fined £218 million for the Libor rigging scandal and that is a meagre fine in comparison to what they’ve had to set aside for the payment protection insurance scandal.
Earlier this year, Lloyds was forced to set aside a further £600 million in order to cover their costs for the vast mis-selling of PPI that they have been involved in. The total Lloyds PPI claims bill is well over the £10 billion mark now and still rising.
On top of these two fines, there have been a number of other fines, smaller in comparison but still, they’re fines. They were also fined £28 million in December of 2012 for promoting a ruthless sales and incentives culture among their staff.
We deal with Lloyds PPI claims on a daily basis and our fast track system allows us to obtain information fast regarding ALL of your accounts and whether any of them have PPI, so there’s no requirement for you to have any paper work in order to launch a Lloyds PPI claim with us today.
You can start your Lloyds PPI claim with us today. Simply fill in our on-line claim form or download a pack for yourself. Our experts are on hand via telephone, email or our live chat feature should you need any help or want any questions answering.
Lloyds PPI Claims
