CYBG is the former Clydesdale Bank and in it’s half year results announced a ‘revised estimate of the expected level of claims and costs’. They swelled the compensation pot by an additional £450m taking the total fund to £2.1bn.
Proposed Deadline
All of Britain’s high street banks are reviewing their PPI provision in the light of the anticipated PPI deadline. The Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) is expected to announce a deadline for consumers to make a claim against UK banks. It was suggested that consumers will have to make their claims by Spring 2018. However there is expected to be a minimum claim window imposed of two years and it is now Summer 2016 so we await the response.
Serious Failings
Clydesdale-Yorkshire were fined a record £20.7m in April 2015 for ‘serious failings’ in the way that it handled and responded to PPI complaints. This included falsifying information supplied to the Financial Ombudsman Service (FOS) about the information that it retained about its customers. The FCA, who conducted the investigation, determined that up to 42,000 complaints could have been unfairly rejected and that up to 50,000 people who had already made claimants might have already received too little compensation.
Bank Management
The investigation found that a team within the bank had ‘altered certain system printouts’ to make it look as though the bank held no relevant documents. They also mis-reported this information to FOS. The team is also said to have deleted PPI information from another printout showing the products sold to customers.
The FCA said senior management at the bank were unaware of what was going on and acting chief executive Debbie Crosbie apologised, saying: “These practices were not authorised or condoned by the banks. As soon as the issue was discovered we took immediate steps to stop it, made the regulator aware and rapidly introduced strict new monitoring procedures to prevent any recurrence.”
Consumer Action
Consumers who have already made a claim against the bank, or had a claim rejected, are urged to ask the bank to reconsider their claim.
