Packaged Bank Account claims

A Packaged Bank Account (PBA) is a bank account where customers are required to pay a monthly fee, typically between £5 and £30, in exchange for certain benefits such as travel insurance, mobile phone insurance and vehicle breakdown cover for example.

Banks use many various names for these accounts to make them sound attractive to customers, such as silver, gold, platinum or value added account.?

The next big mis-selling scandal!

Do you have a bank account for which you pay a monthly fee?

If you do, or even if you had but closed it within the the last 3 years, you may have been mis-sold the account.

Just like the huge PPI mis-selling scandal, it is clear that the profits generated by selling these accounts to customers have encouraged a culture of mis-selling within banks.

This is likely to see the banks facing a compensation bill running into the BILLIONS.

What is a Packaged Bank Account (PBA)?

A PBA requires customers to pay a monthly fee, generally between £5 – £30, in return for a range of ‘inclusive’ products, such as mobile phone insurance, travel insurance or breakdown to name a few.

To make the accounts sound more attractive to customers in order to sell the accounts, banks use different names for the accounts such as gold, platinum, value account.

Banks will also, when discussing accounts with customers, state that they can ‘upgrade’ their current account to a PBA, again in an attempt to make them sound more attractive.

You are not alone, millions potentially affected

Much like the PPI scandal, we estimate that the number of people affected could run into millions.

The number of complaints is rising as people become more aware of the problem, and media interest increases after the huge PPI mis-selling scandal.

Knowing if your PBA was ‘mis-sold’

There are various reasons why a packaged bank account may be deemed as having been mis-sold, so why not have a look and see whether you may have a case.

Why were PBA’s mis-sold?

Much as with the mis-selling of PPI, greed got the better of the banks due to the obscene profits in selling such products.

In September 2012 the FCA published evidence of banks poor practice and found that sales staff were driven to sell products through targeted incentive schemes, bonuses and rewards.

The review uncovered a range of serious failings, such as:

• Most incentive schemes were likely to drive people to mis-sell and these risks were not being properly managed;
• Banks failing to identify how incentive schemes might encourage staff to mis-sell, suggesting they had not properly thought about the risks or simply turned a blind eye to them;
• Banks failing to understand their own incentive schemes because they were so complex, therefore making it harder to control them;
• Banks relying too much on routine monitoring of staff rather than taking account of the specific features of their incentive schemes;
• Sales managers with clear conflicts of interests, such as a responsibility to manage the conduct of sales staff whilst themselves able to earn a bonus if their team made more sales;
• Banks not doing enough to control the risk of mis-selling in face to face situations.

Packaged Bank Account