The UK Financial Services Authority found that complaints about mis-sold payment protection insurance (PPI) increased 85% in the last six months of 2011, totaling over 1 million claims. Major UK banks were overwhelmed by customers demanding compensation for improper PPI sales. PPI was insurance sold with loans and credit cards, but many customers were mis-sold policies when PPI was unnecessary, unrequired, or sold without consent. The spike in PPI complaints has increased claims against banks by 21% compared to the last half of 2011.

1. Data from the United Kingdom’s Financial Services Authority has lifted the lid on the scale
and scope of the Payment Protection Insurance Scandal. The FSA estimates that complaints
regarding mis-sold PPI skyrocketed eighty-five percent, to total an astonishing one million
ppi claims, in the last six months of 2011.
The information released by the FSA reveal a scene of major UK high street banks,
overwhelmed by email, letters and telephone calls from irate customers demanding
compensation for their mis sold PPI.
PPI was a form of insurance that was placed upon credit cards and loans, as a vehicle to help
a person cover their re-payments if that person, became unemployed, ill or was unable to
meet the monthly loan bills. The banks mis-sold ppi to a wide range of people, for whom ppi
was not needed, not required, or who ended up paying for PPI without their knowledge.
A couple of these banks have been allocated more time to be process their ppi claims and
work their way through their massive hoard of ppi complaints.
Originally, the banks were required to send out a compensation offer for mis sold ppi to their
customers within a timeframe of eight weeks and then deliver compensation quickly.
However, according to the FSA, a mere four in ten PPI claims cases were completed within
eight weeks, a figure which has slumped from the earlier figure of seven out of ten ppi cases
being completed within eight weeks.
This jump in PPI claims against the banks has shifted the overall amount of PPI claims to
twenty-one percent higher than in the last six months of 2011.
Nearly 1.66 million ppi claims were sent to uk banks, building societies, insurance companies
and other companies who provided payment protection insurance in the months between july
and December 2011, the FSA exclusively revealed.
Sixty percent of PPI claims made were won by the customer, a figure which has risen from
fifty-one percent of PPI claims being successfully won by the consumer versus the banks
from the last six months of 2011.
The bank which holds the dubious honour of possessing the most PPI claims against it is the
UK state owned Lloyds TSB, which received nearly 187,000 insurance based complaints and
52,000 banking based complaints.
Barclays PLC held the most banking based complaints from their customers, a figure that
reached an astonishing 146,000, while the Spanish banking giant Santander was in second
place and received 138.000 complaints.