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September 22, 2014 
Daniel Lee HSBC Holdings are set to pay $550m (£335m) in order to resolve a US regulators claim made against them. It is stated that the British bank has made a number of false representations in the sale of mortgage bonds to the federal mortgage companies Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac before the financial crisis hit back in 2007/08.
This will come as a blow to HSBC as it only adds to the amount that they’ve already paid out for things like the Payment Protection Insurance (PPI) which they mis-sold on such a wide scale.
The settlement was announced last Friday, September 12th between the bank’s US unit and the Federal Housing Finance Agency (FHFA), the regulator of the two Government-controlled finance companies.
This agreement coincidentally came just three weeks before a trial that was set to start on September 29th in New York. In this trial, HSBC could have faced charges up to $1.6bn in damages.
This deal is the latest in a long line of 18 different lawsuits that the FHFA filed in 2011 in order to recover losses on $200bn in mortgage-backed securities which were sold to Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, which the US Govt. took control of amid the 2008 economic crisis.
After this revelation, the general public must find themselves asking, yet again “can the banks be trusted?”
If HSBC have been up to this over in the US, can anyone say that they haven’t been doing the same over here? Only a few weeks ago, RBS were fined £15 million for their mortgage advice failings so what’s to say that others haven’t been doing the same thing?
Of course, there’s not telling either way but trust in the big banks must be at an all-time low at the minute, especially after the PPI mis-selling scandal came to light in the mid-2000s.
Taking a side step away from PPI, there’s also come to light recently yet more reasons for trust in the banks to be at a severe low.
It is estimated that there are currently 1 in 5 of us here in the UK who have a packaged bank account and it’s come to light recently that these have been widely mis-sold too. Last year the Financial Ombudsman Service (FOS) received a total of 6,000 complaints about packaged bank accounts.
If you think that you’ve been mis-sold a PBA, you can make a packaged bank account claim with us today.
HSBC
September 22, 2014 Daniel Lee 13 banks are facing allegations of fraud in the US state of Virginia and there are three British banks amongst those.
Barclays, HSBC and the bailed out Royal Bank of Scotland are among the 13 and they’re facing a claim of $1.15bn (£700m) in damages in the US state of Virginia over the sale of mortgage bonds during the financial crisis.
Of course, this isn’t the only thing that these big British banks have found themselves in hot water over. Since the mid-2000s, when the PPI mis-selling scandal came to light, they’ve had to set aside billions of pounds in order to fairly compensate the millions of people who were mis-sold payment protection insurance.
The Virginia attorney general, Mark Herring has made the accusations against the 13 which relate to the sale of bonds to the state’s retirement fund from 2004 to 2010. According to Mr. Herring, the 13 banks packaged up very risky home loans as part of the bonds or securities.
These bonds and securities were then sold on to the Virginia Retirement System as AAA-rated bonds and the fund has the best part of 600,000 members which include teachers, employees from the city and county governments, state troopers and court employees.
There was a case filed in the Richmond Circuit Court which shows the actions of the banks in the run-up to the financial crisis. They continued to come under scrutiny by the authorities, potentially undermining attempts by banks to improve their reputations that had been repeatedly knocked by allegations about their behaviour.
According to the allegations, the banks fraudulently misrepresented the quality of the mortgages that they packaged up and sold to investors such as the Virginia Retirement system.
The allegations suggest that 40% of the mortgages that were sold on to the retirement fund had a higher risk of default than what was disclosed at the time that they were purchased. This led to $383m worth of losses.
HSBC has recently been under scrutiny for the mis-selling of mortgages in the US and they have recently agreed to pay $550 million to settle the dispute.
This was paid in order to settle a dispute where HSBC holdings faced $1.6bn in damages should the ruling have gone against them. To read more about this, click here.
If you think you have been mis-sold PPI, why not start your claim with us today by filling in our form online, or you can download yourself a PPI claim form and fill it in and get it sent back to us to launch your claim today.
British Banks
November 4, 2015 Daniel Lee In 1853, Halifax previously known as Halifax Building Society was founded, named after a small market town in West Yorkshire, becoming known as ‘Halifax plc’ in 1997 when it became a public limited company. Halifax, in it’s various formats, has historically been the largest supplier of residential mortgages and savings accounts in the United Kingdom.
In 2001 Bank of Scotland joined forces with Halifax, after agreeing to a £10.8 billion merger. This union became known as Halifax Bank of Scotland (HBOS).
In 2006, HBOS transferred all of Halifax’s assets and liabilities over to Bank of Scotland, and in doing so Halifax became a division of Bank of Scotland.
A takeover by Lloyds TSB of HBOS in January of 2009 was approved, and confirmation of the deal was released on 19th January 2009. This saw HBOS becoming part of the Lloyds Banking Group, which it continues to be to this day.
Halifax was founded 161 years ago, but only over the past 20 years, since the mass change overs have the problems emerged.
In the first 140ish years of existence there seemed to be little in the way of scandal surrounding Halifax, and it was generally seen as a trustworthy bank, as most banks were considered at the time. Only in the last 20 years or so has Halifax, and it’s new partners, been caught up in a web of lies, deceit and scandal.
Is it a coincidence that when Halifax ceased to answer to it’s customers, and started to trade for the benefit of it’s shareholders, that scandal after scandal started to come to light?
Is it a coincidence that in chasing profits to line the pockets of a few, that millions of loyal customers have been cheated out of their hard earned money?
Lloyds Banking Group is certainly the biggest culprit in the biggest financial scandal to hit the UK. Setting aside £10.4 BILLION so far to compensate innocent customers for the mis-selling of Payment Protection Insurance (PPI) sees the group footing 40% of the total PPI bill. Their bill continues to soar, adding a further £600 MILLION in July of 2014 and this will not be the last addition they make to the pot.
Halifax appeared to be trading morally and decently for 140 years, but since joining HBOS and Lloyds Banking Group there problems have started and complaints have been increasing at a worrying rate.
As if mis-selling policies in their millions wasn’t bad enough, Lloyds Banking Group along with most other lenders have also been caught rejecting valid PPI complaints. There’s a simple reason for this, with an estimated 9/10 rejected complaints not being referred up to the Financial Ombudsman Service (FOS), which in turn has saved the banking sector £17 BILLION in PPI compensation, according to our estimates.
After rejecting a significant number of complaints, they were also fined £4.3 MILLION by the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) in February of 2013 for delaying pay outs of compensation.
Lloyds Banking Group, like all banks we are currently aware of, have also been caught mis-selling Packaged Bank Accounts (PBA) to their customers.
Should the group be accountable for 40% of the mis-selling of PBA’s, much like they were for PPI, then this could see them having to set aside another significant amount of money to compensate customers of this new scandal, given our calculations that PBA mis-selling is worth £BILLIONS.
A recent fine dished out to Lloyds Banking Group of £28 MILLION from the FCA only compounds our worst fears that the banking sector refuses to change it’s ways and learn from it’s mistakes. It appears to lure of profits outweighs everything else. The fine was issued due to the banks’ continued push to sell products by pressurising staff with incentives and bonus targets, which clearly only ever leads to mis-selling.
It appears that Halifax’s decisions over the last 20 years, in becoming a public limited company, in forming HBOS, and in becoming part of the Lloyds Banking Group have had irreparable damage on the reputation and moral standing of this once trusted institution.
From being the largest provider of residential mortgages and savings accounts, to being part of the organization which is biggest culprit of mis-selling Payment Protection Insurance and Packaged Bank Accounts can only be put down to mis-management on a huge scale.
Halifax PPI claims have risen year on year since the scandal broke in the mid 2000’s. Indeed Halifax PPI claims make up a significant proportion of the 10 BILLION + that Lloyds Banking Group has set aside to compensate customers.
Your Money Claim deal with Halifax PPI claims on a daily basis. Our fast track system allows us to obtain information 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 Halifax PPI claim.
Start your Halifax PPI claims today by simply filling in our on-line claim form or downloading a pack. Our experts are on hand via telephone, email or our live chat to answer your questions.
Halifax PPI Claims
June 8, 2015 Daniel Lee Packaged Bank Accounts, or Paid For Bank Accounts as they are sometimes referred to are soon to be big news. Brace yourselves, you may well be hearing about these on the same sort of scale as PPI!
A Packaged Bank Account is basically an account that includes a monthly fee ranging from £5 – £30 in return for various insurance products, most commonly travel insurance, mobile phone insurance and vehicle breakdown cover to name a few.
With 10 million of these accounts active today it’s estimated at least 1 in 5 of us have one. There could well be millions of these accounts that are no longer active, but claims can still be made against these so don’t be put off if you used to have a Packaged Bank Account, we can still help.
Just as PPI, these have been mis-sold on a staggering scale, in order to generate profits for the greedy banks that would make your eyes water. There are so many reasons for a mis-sale, and we’ve talked about this previously.
In 2013 there were nearly 6,000 Packaged Bank Account claim complaints made to The Financial Ombudsman Service (FOS). It’s important to remember the FOS don’t see the full 100% of complaints, only the ones rejected by the banks.
In the 2012/2013 tax year the FOS saw 1,629 complaints made so overall we estimate that there was less than 5,000 made in that year. This grew significantly the following year, 2013/2014, as the FOS recorded 5,668 complaints, thus giving an estimated 17,000 complaints made to the bank in total.
This year there has been a rapid increase to 400 daily Packaged Bank Account complaints made EVERY DAY to the banks. At that rate we can expect 146,000 complaints to be made this year, an increase of 870%!!!.
Complaints made about the mis-selling Packaged Bank Accounts now accounts for 17% of complaints made to the FOS, with PPI still taking up 77% of complaints.
As complaints about PPI start to drop a little, and it is just a little, Packaged Bank Account claims is the fastest growing area of complaint being dealt with by banks and the FOS. We estimate that Packaged Bank Account claims could well hit the heights that PPI has, given the fact that it’s easier to spot than PPI, which was often hidden away in the small print, whereas a Packaged Bank Account can be spotted by simply checking if you pay a monthly fee for your account.
We are of the opinion that the compensation bill for the banks is likely to run into the £BILLIONS, much a with PPI.
The banks have yet to come out and state what they believe the cost of paying compensation will be, probably because they don’t want to highlight the fact they’ve been caught cheating AGAIN.
They will eventually have to put a figure on things, although we wouldn’t be surprised if the majority of the banks, including HSBC (including First Direct), Lloyds (including Halifax and Bank of Scotland), Santander (including Abbey and Alliance & Leicester), Barclays and RBS (including NatWest), place their initial estimations at a relatively low figure.
The banks don’t want to advertise the fact they’ve been cheating, nor do they wish to startle investors and shareholders by stating what the true cost of the scandal could be.
A clear example of this is the PPI scandal, where banks have consistently reported a much lower figure to what we believe the eventual cost will be. In 2012, the banks released a statement stating their belief that the final PPI bill will be £25 billion. They haven’t changed this stance, even when they recently had to add £3 billion in the space of 6 weeks to the compensation pot, taking it to £24 billion. With an estimated 7 million people yet to claim PPI compensation, we believe the final figure will surpass £30 billion with ease over the course of the next 18 months.
We expect the banks to use the same tactics when it comes to dealing with, and reporting on Packaged Bank Accounts, but don’t be fooled, this will be a huge number.
Our experts have looked closely into just how much this new scandal could end up costing the banks, and the figures are huge, so let’s take a closer look to see how we estimate that the total bill could run into the £BILLIONS.
This figure doesn’t even take into account the thousands, or even millions, of Packaged Bank Accounts that have been closed!!! You are still able to claim on a closed account so our figure may well be an underestimation.
Your Money Claim are the experts in recovering compensation for mis-sold Packaged Bank Accounts, and mis-sold PPI.
Your Money Claim carry out the necessary checks, build your case, deal with the banks (and their tactics) every step of the way and keep you updated with the status of your case throughout. Taking the stress and time out of making a claim, and beating the banks every day is what we do, so why not start your claim today?
Packaged Bank Account Claims
August 11, 2015 Daniel Lee Everyone loves their granny and grandpa but they could be missing out on quite a significant amount of money due to their lack of experience using things like tablets, smart phones and computers.
Tens, even hundreds, of thousands of elderly people around the UK could be missing out on money that is owed to them in PPI reclaims. According to the charity Age UK, there are an awful lot of elderly people missing out on money that is owed to them due to not being online.
Denise McKenzie from Age UK Hammersmith & Fulham is convinced that elderly people are missing out. Denise is behind the Money Wise project in the area which has set out to create greater awareness for finance in the local area.
It is estimated that the number of elderly who aren’t online, or don’t have a firm understanding of the internet, is more than 25%.
The primary source of news for anyone who is looking to reclaim mis-sold PPI is the internet, and if 25% of pensioners are not accessing this information then they’re even less likely to know they may have a valid case for compensation.
It’s generally felt that our older generations are also averse to cold calling, which could be a bit of a silver lining to this potential cloud. Cold callers are to be avoided at all costs, as this is where people can get themselves into trouble with rogue firms. Signing up to any company that cold calls could end up costing thousands, rather than being thousands better off.
So, the more than 25% of elderly people that aren’t online is quite a a large amount of people. Our estimations bring us a figure of 7 million people in the UK that have STILL yet to make a claim, and there will be a significant number of elderly people among them.
First things first, if you’re reading this then chances are you have a decent grasp of the world wide web. However, as the world moves more and more towards an online way of living, there will be many people who may well start to feel cut off if they’re not computer and internet savvy.
The government are setting up free training courses on a regular basis, which reaffirms just how important they feel a basic understanding of computing and internet knowledge is becoming. Age UK run specialist computer training courses aimed at pensioners, and you can find one near you if you click here.
Do you know of somebody that isn’t exactly computer literate? Could they be missing out on claiming what they could be owed? Are they one of the estimated 7 million yet to make a claim? Are you?!!
Making a claim couldn’t be simpler, simply fill in our online form and we’ll get a pack out to you. All it takes is two minutes of your time and you could be thousands, or even tens of thousands better off.
Your Money Claim, using it’s fast-track system, can locate your accounts (even if you don’t know them), check whether you’ve had PPI, and deal with the lenders every step, fighting your corner all the way.
If you’ve already staked your claim, but you know of others who haven’t, whether it be friends or family members, then why not take advantage of our industry leading referral scheme.
You’ll find all the details here.
Elderly Owed PPI
September 18, 2014 Daniel Lee We’ve claimed back thousands of pounds for thousands of our customers and we’re continuing to do so. But we figured, why should we just claim the money back for our customers and leave it at that?
Payment Protection Insurance is a product that was mis-sold with a number of different products such as mortgages, credit cards, loans etc. PPI was intended to cover any of your re-payments for your mortgage, loan, credit card, etc. should you find yourself in a position where you were unable to make the payment. For example, if you became ill or lost your job, you would have been covered by this insurance.
More often than not though, you would find that bank salesmen would mis-sell the product in order to hit sales targets and that is what has led the country to the state that it is in today with the PPI mis-selling scandal becoming the biggest mis-selling scandal in Britain.
This is a product that could be seen as an alternative to PPI. It is very similar but not exactly the same in that PPI will only cover the cost of the loan or credit that you have taken out, nothing more or nothing less.
Income protection insurance covers you for your whole salary as opposed to just the loan or amount of credit you have. Formerly known as permanent health insurance or PHI, long-term income protection insurance or IP, is an insurance policy that pays out should you not be able to work due to illness or injury.
IP also pays out until retirement, death or you make your return to work but this depends entirely on the type of policy you took out as there are cheaper, short term policies available. More often than not, IP doesn’t pay out if you’re made redundant but does offer “back to work” help if you’re off sick.
Insurance policies such as payment protection insurance and private medical insurance, which the general public was convinced it needed, were widely mis-sold by salespeople and not necessarily what the customer needed.
There’s only one insurance policy that all working adults should have in the United Kingdom and that is income protection insurance.
Also, they normally pay-out based on a percentage of your earnings of which the norm is 50 – 70% and these payments are always tax free. If you want any more information on income protection insurance, click this link.
There are a few other alternatives out there for you to look into. If you’re unsure where to look for them, it wouldn’t harm you to sit down and talk to your employer.
We say this because your employer may cover you if you are ever off sick or if you’re unable to work for one reason or another. You may not need to look into any additional cover if you’re already covered by your employer.
More alternatives are for you to start to look into what state benefits there are out there. These are the kinds of benefits that are paid for through national insurance contributions or NICs. If you’re an employee, more often than not, you’ll be entitled to SSP or statutory sick pay for up to 28 weeks which will be paid by your employer. This currently stands at £75.40 a week.
One other alternative for you to look into is employment and support allowance (ESA). If you’ve been paid your SSP, you will have come to the end of that after a maximum of 28 weeks. After this period, there’s then a 13 week period where you’ll be assessed to see if you qualify for the ESA.
If after this 13 week period it turns out you do qualify for ESA, you will then be notified of which type you qualify for. There are two types of ESA that you could qualify for. If you want to read more about any state benefits you could be entitled to, check out Direct Gov.
If you think that you have been mis-sold payment protection insurance, you should get in touch with us and one of our claims experts will be on hand to assist you should you have any questions.
If you want to give us a call, you can find our phone number here. We also have a live chat facility on our website so if you’d prefer, one of our claims experts will be on hand to chat straight away.
PPI Alternatives
