Are you owed a refund? Almost 750,000 customers could still claim compensation as Barclays sets aside an extra £700m for PPI payouts
BARCLAYS has announced it would fork out an additional £700 million to compensate hundreds of thousands of customers for mis-sold payment protection insurance (PPI).
It brings the bank’s total compo pot for the PPI scandal to a total of £9.1bn.
About 2 million PPI claims were already processed by Barclays in the year through to June 30.
But the bank is still expecting to receive some 740,000 compensation claims from customers.
The news came as Barclays reported a £1.2bn loss for the first half of 2017 after the sale of part of its Africa unit. Stripping out the one-off hit of £2.5bn relating to that, it recorded a pre-tax profit increase of 13 per cent on the same period a year earlier.
But, the legacy of the PPI scandal continued to haunt the bank, with core profit before tax slipping 25 per cent to £2.98 billion in response to the extra PPI provision.
The move from Barlays also follows a decision by Lloyds Bank on Thursday to increase its PPI provisions, taking its total to £18.1bn — the equivalent of Estonia’s GDP.
Gareth Shaw, a money expert at consumer group Which?, said: "With banks now setting aside more money for PPI claims, it shows that the fallout from this mis-selling scandal is far from over and there are significant amounts of compensation due to consumers.
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As the deadline approaches to make a claim, Which? urged customers to use its free PPI claim tool rather than claims management companies, who can charge up to a third of the compensation offered.
The consumer group is also calling for other banks to sign up to the tool and for the regulator to make free-to-use tools a more central part of its communications campaign.
Overall around 60 million PPI policies were sold over the past 30 years – during which there have been 18.4million complaints, according to the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA).
The FCA is urging people who are “unsure” whether they had PPI to make a claim before the deadline on August 29 2019.
How to check if you have PPI?
You will need to check the documents you signed when you took out a financial product such as a mortgage, loan or credit card.
PPI would also appear on statements and could also be called loan protection, credit insurance, loan repayment insurance, ASU (accident, sickness and unemployment) insurance, account cover or payment cover.’
You could also ask the company who sold you the financial product.
The Financial Conduct Authority has a handy checklist to help decipher if you have been mis-sold. If you can answer yes to any of these then it is worth making a claim.
- Were you pressured into buying PPI?
- Were you told you must have PPI?
- Were you advised to take out PPI that did not suit your circumstances?
- Were you promised a cheaper rate or a better chance of acceptance of the loan or credit, if you took PPI?
- Was PPI added without telling you? Some agreements added PPI automatically with pre-ticked boxes so you had to opt out, not in
- Were you self-employed, unemployed or retired but advised to take PPI?
- Did you have a pre-existing medical condition?
- Were you advised if this condition was (or was not) included in your PPI?
- Was it not made clear that you would pay interest on the PPI if it was added to your loan?
- Was not it made clear that the PPI cover would end before the loan or credit was repaid?
HOW MUCH CAN YOU CLAIM BACK?
IF your claim is successful, the amount you get depends on your circumstances.
Ultimately you should get back all your premiums plus interest.
Between £300 million and £400million has been paid out per month in recent years and the average payout is around £2,000
How to claim a refund for PPI
First you need to contact the business that sold you the product and they must respond to your complaint within eight weeks.
If they reject your claim you can then go to the Financial Ombudsman Service to have your case reviewed.
It doesn’t cost anything to complain. There are free template letters you can download from websites such as MoneySavingExpert or the FCA also provides a claim form.
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Consumer group Which? has also created a free tool to help people make claims.
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