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Nearly half a million PPI victims could have had claims wrongly turned down by the Financial Ombudsman Service, Channel 4’s Dispatches claim
NEARLY half a million PPI claims could have been wrongly rejected by the Financial Ombudsman Service, an investigation by Channel 4 claims.
Its undercover Dispatches team alleges staff at the service were unable to deal with complaints properly due to poor training and a lack of understanding about how some financial products worked.
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Current and former members of staff - including senior managers - told the programme there are big problems at the service, which steps-in between Brits and financial providers when something goes wrong.
One insider said: "Training was not adequate. We rushed through complicated financial issues and processes. I often didn’t know what I was doing."
Another said: "I'm not proud to admit it but I’ve done it myself – just taken a chance and just slung stuff through, with any old decision.
"For more complex cases, the right decision isn’t always reached. Legitimate claims are being missed."
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Dispatches sent an undercover reporter to work as a trainee investigator at the service.
And one investigator admitted to the reporter that even she doesn't know what she's always doing - even after working there for 18 months - and at times has to rely on Google to find out how certain financial products work.
She said: "Been doing this a year and a half…went to my first investment training session yesterday and was saying to the girl who was running it, even now I look at an investment case and I don’t know what to ask for.
"... Sometimes I’ve not even heard of the products. I have to Google what it is first."
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Another claims advisor, Mark Davies, told the programme that he think huge numbers of PPI cases needs to be looked at again.
FOS has rejected 35 per cent of total PPI complaints since April 2010 - 495,877 of 1,419,533.
Mr Davies said: "That very clear and specific problem has affected, our analysis indicates, in excess of half a million complainants."
The programme also alleges that some members of staff weren't impartial when it comes to pay day loans.
One investigator was recorded as saying: "...Completely stupid, I don’t know why you’d do them anyway...you have to get statements – really boring expenditure statements."
In response a manager says: "Yes, I never really got that far when I was doing payday loans – I wasn’t very sympathetic… you borrowed 100 quid, you were struggling what else were you going to do, where’s the problem - they’re called payday loans for a reason."
The findings were shown to former pensions minister Baroness Ros Altmann.
Has the wrong decision been made?
INSIDERS who spoke to Dispatches claim that a large back-log of cases built up in 2014/15 - in part due to the level of PPI claims.
Investigators had to take on more cases and if they missed a target their pay and chances of promotion could suffer.
A staff member said: "11,000 cases fell into a black hole. Two years later we find out they’ve not been looked at and we had to work our way through them all."
The Dispatches reporter was also told that there was pressure on staff to deal with cases as fast as they could and this may have meant cases weren't dealt with properly.
The investigator said: "You just can’t do it. Banking complaints are just horrid, having to work out what happened, it’s just not feasible – it really isn’t.
Undercover reporter: "And do you think it has, it had an effect in terms of your ability to go through each case properly and handle it as you should be?"
Investigator: "Massively. Massively. You were just churning them out…"
This pressure could have led to the bank being wrongly favoured in rulings.
The undercover reporter said: "So - like - if you’re under pressure, you’re more likely to meet your targets if you’re not upholding them?"
The investigator responded: "Yeah, because you just need to make one call to the consumer, rather than trying to persuade the business, which is actually a lot harder."
She said: "That’s hundreds of thousands of people… who appear not to have been treated as fairly as you would wish from the ombudsmen service.
"I think the government should urgently look at and ask for the management of the financial ombudsmen service to justify some of the evidence that we’ve seen here.
"I don’t see how anybody can think it’s acceptable that the people who are making those judgments don’t know the detail…it is crucial."
On the footage about pay day loans she said: "No account taken of the circumstances, perhaps the mental health of the person who is taking out that loan, or the way in which it was sold to them.
"I mean that is truly shocking and I would say utterly unacceptable."
A spokesman for the service told The Sun Online: "We have resolved over 1.4 million PPI complaints – and we have upheld two thirds of these in favour of consumers, finding against the banks.
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"Overall last year, we upheld 43 per cent of complaints in favour of consumers, ranging at times from 10 per cent to 90 per cent depending on the nature of the dispute and the business involved.
"We haven’t seen the programme yet, but we will of course consider any concerns it raises."
More than one million consumers contact the service each year.
Dispatches Undercover: Who's Policing your Bank? will be shown this evening on Channel 4 at 8pm.
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