Monday 13 June 2011

No quibble PPI compensation

Barclays is promising to compensate all customers whose PPI complaints were on hold, without quibbling about whether the complaints were justified.

They were on hold while leading banks fought a court battle with the Financial Services Authority over how many should receive payouts, a battle which the banks lost.

How generous is Barclays being?

It appears that tens of thousands could benefit. And it must be possible that some will receive payouts even if their claims were pretty flimsy.

On the other hand, figures from the Financial Ombudsman Service show that 75% of the Barclays cases it received were decided in favour of the complainant in any case.

What's more, Barclays has to pay £500 for each case that the Ombudsman has to deal with after an appeal. So contesting claims can be costly.

The numbers of complaints upheld by the banks are high as well, though Barclays won't comment on its own figures.

And they have large teams of people trawling through all these complaints. It's an expensive exercise if you are usually in the wrong.

Perhaps Barclays has decided that the cost of not quibbling isn't much higher than the cost of quibbling. It's certainly an easier route to take.

There is no sign of Barclays raising the £1bn provision it has made for PPI compensation.

Here's the link to a recent BBC article on who can put in a PPI claim and how to do it.

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