Some £379m was paid in compensation in November 2011 to people who were mis-sold Payment Protection Insurance (PPI) – the highest total of any month.
This was an increase from the £268m paid out in October 2011, the Financial Services Authority (FSA) said.
PPI was supposed to repay people’s loans if their income dropped because they fell ill or lost their jobs, but thousands were mis-sold the policies.
The figures are supplied to the FSA by 16 unnamed firms.
These firms accounted for 92% of all PPI cases in the first six months of 2011.
After losing a High Court test case in April, banks were told to deal with 200,000 complaints which they had put on hold pending the hearing’s outcome.
Redress paid to customers has climbed dramatically since the conclusion of the judicial review.
Earlier in January, the Financial Ombudsman Service (FOS) said there had been a renewed surge in PPI complaints in the final three months of 2011.
The FOS received 55,907 complaints in the final quarter of the year, up by 10% from the previous three months.
Alan Hoey, MD of RBC MON£Y said that “banks are getting better at some processes to repay clients but the path for complainants was not as simple as it should be, and if the case has to be referred to the FOS, the length of time for a complaint to be resolved either way could well exceed 12 months which is totally unfair to complainants.” He added “Should the FOS move a team into each bank and help directly at source to get things handled quickly, promptly and more importantly fairly and in line with normal complaint timescales. Surely if the banks repaid the estimates £9.5 BILLION pounds to consumers more quickly this would have an overall good effect for the economy on a whole.”
“Maybe Stephen Hester can earn some of his £900,000 shares bonus in RBS in looking closely at missold PPI and helping clients get fair treatment.”
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-16741396
