The Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) has issued its largest ever retail fine to Lloyds Bank Plc, Bank of Scotland Plc and Black Horse Ltd for failing to treat their customers fairly when handling Payment Protection Insurance (PPI) complaints between March 2012 and May 2013.
The group was fined £117m in total.
During the relevant period Lloyds assessed customer complaints relating to more than 2.3 million PPI policies and rejected 37 percent of those complaints.
Firms are required to assess complaints impartially and can reject unfounded claims.
In March 2012, Lloyds issued guidance instructing complaint handlers that the overriding principle when assessing complaints was that Lloyds’ PPI sales processes were compliant and robust unless told otherwise (the Overriding Principle).
In addition, Lloyds did not notify complaint handlers of known failings identified in its PPI sales processes during the relevant period.
Some complaint handlers relied on the Overriding Principle to dismiss customers’ personal accounts of what had happened during the PPI sale or to not fully investigate customers’ complaints. In some instances, Lloyds did not contact customers to enable them to give their account of the sale.
As a result of Lloyds’ misconduct, a significant number of customer complaints were unfairly rejected.
Georgina Philippou, acting director of enforcement and market oversight at the FCA said: “PPI complaint handling is a high priority issue for the FCA. If trust in financial services is going to be restored following the widespread mis-selling of PPI, then customers need to be confident that their complaints will be treated fairly.
“The size of the fine today reflects the fact that so many complaints were mishandled by Lloyds. Customers who had already been treated unfairly once by being mis-sold PPI were treated unfairly a second time and denied the redress they were owed. Lloyds’ conduct was unacceptable.”
As a result of a substantial decline in the proportion of complaints upheld between March 2012 and October 2012, the FCA’s predecessor, the Financial Services Authority (FSA), began investigating the way Lloyds was handling PPI complaints. Following the FSA’s intervention Lloyds removed the Overriding Principle from its PPI complaint assessment process and provided information on all sales process failings to complaint handlers.
Lloyds has made significant progress towards the fairer treatment of customers in its general complaint handling operation and has established an extensive remediation programme to re-review or automatically uphold approximately 1.2 million PPI complaints, including those within the relevant period. Lloyds has set aside a total of £710m to cover any redress due to affected customers. Customers do not need to take any action. Those affected and due redress are being contacted directly. The FCA has appointed an independent skilled person to oversee the remediation process.
Lord Blackwell, chairman of Lloyds Banking Group, said: “We accept the FCA’s findings and apologise to those customers who were impacted. Since 2011 the Group has made significant progress to strengthen the business. We are trying to get it right for our customers and to rebuild trust. But we do not get everything right. That means when we make mistakes, we will take responsibility for them. This is what we have done here. The Board remains fully committed to ensure everyone at Lloyds Banking Group puts customers at the heart of our business.”
António Horta-Osório, group chief executive of Lloyds Banking Group, said: “In 2011 Lloyds led the industry in starting to redress customers who had been mis-sold PPI. We did this because we believed it was the right thing to do. When we began the remediation programme, it was thought this would cost the entire industry around £4.5 billion. To date the industry has set aside over £26 billion for PPI redress with the consequent impact on operational complexity and the significant administrative resources required.
“Whilst our intentions were right, we made mistakes in our handling of some PPI complaints. I am very sorry for this. We have been working hard with the FCA to ensure all customers receive appropriate redress. That process is now substantially complete. We remain fully committed to improving our operational procedures and ensuring we do the right thing for our customers.”
Lloyds announced in February 2015 that it had decided to freeze the release of shares in respect of deferred bonus awards from 2012 and 2013 for all members of the Group Executive Committee and for some other senior executives as a result of the FCA’s Enforcement investigation.
Lloyds agreed to settle at an early stage of the investigation and therefore qualified for a 30 percent discount. Were it not for this discount the FCA would have imposed a fine of £167,758,035.
