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September 24, 2014 
Daniel Lee You should be well aware by now that the banks in this country are consistently finding that they’re being fined for one thing or another. Recently, the majority of the fines have been for Payment Protection Insurance (PPI).
That isn’t saying that all of the bank fines have been for PPI, there’s been a number of other banks that have been fined for different things. For example, Royal Bank of Scotland was fined £15 million for their poor mortgage advice.
The likes of Barclays, Citigroup and Deutsche Bank are among the banks that could be liable to face “material and widespread” fines for a variety of mis-conducts like the rigging of currency rates and, for the likes of Barclays, the mis-selling of PPI.
All of this information has come from Fitch Ratings who have said that other top banks around the world like Credit Suisse and Bank of America are amongst the banks that could be facing further fines and could well be exposed to ‘litigation and other conduct risks’.
It’s not new news that all around the world; banks are struggling to restore consumer confidence after the financial crisis began in 2007/08. That much has been evident in the last few years and the banks have made it much worse for themselves with the PPI mis-selling scandal coming to light too.
Bringing the news a bit closer to home and stepping away from talking about global banks, there is going to be change at Santander, the UKs fifth biggest lender.
The former Royal Bank of Scotland chief executive Nathan Bostock will be appointed as the new chief at Santander as Ana Botin has left the bank recently to become the group executive chairman of Banco Santander following her father’s death, Emilio Botin.
Santander has set aside almost £1 billion for the mis-selling of PPI and this is including the bank’s subsidiaries such as Alliance & Leicester and Abbey National. Shortly after this announcement was made, the then chief exec of the bank, Ana Botin came out and stated that she was happy with the state of the bank’s financial figures.
This is a much smaller amount when compared to the money set aside by the other banks such as the Lloyds Banking Group which includes the likes of Halifax and Bank of Scotland and it also pales in comparison to the likes of Natwest, RBS, Barclays and HSBC.
All of these banks plus a great number of other lenders have all mis-sold PPI on a huge scale in this country and it’s no surprise to see the likes of Barclays included in the list of major banks that can expect to receive fines in the coming years.
If you think you may have been mis-sold PPI or you know someone who may have been mis-sold PPI, why not start your claim with us today. If you think you know someone who may have been mis-sold PPI, why not use our refer a friend scheme?
Big Bank Fines
September 23, 2014 Daniel Lee You may remember earlier this year, in June Lloyds floated the TSB side of the bank and thus became known as just Lloyds instead of Lloyds TSB. This equated to the bank selling 38.5% of the group at a cost of 260 pence (£2.60) per share.
Well, Royal Bank of Scotland is gearing up to go a similar way to Lloyds. They’re looking at floating their US business at a valuation thought to be up to $14bn (£8.5bn).
The top dogs at RBS’ US branch are set to receive a hefty pay-out when their business receives what is expected to be a $9m when the sale starts this week.
The floating of Citizen’s Financial Group, which is expected to get underway this week, will net the bank a cool $4bn (£2.4bn) which will be a welcome boost to their capital position.
Bruce Van Saun, the former RBS finance director who was made the chief executive of Citizens last year is also set to receive a big pay out as part of IPO related compensation and there is also four other executives who are set to receive their share of $4.1m.
The way that these bonuses/payments will be shared out is a mix of a convertible bond and RBS shares. The RBS shares will also be able to be converted in to Citizens shares when the company floats, allowing the execs to sell their shares.
So, you may be wondering what this means for us back over here in the UK. Well, the bank have announced that they plan on selling off 161m shares in Citizens which is a 29% stake and they plan on selling the shares off between $23 and $25 per share.
You may already be aware that the bank is already 80% owned by the taxpayer and they’re planning on selling off Citizens by the end of 2016, by which time it is expected that the Government will have begun selling off its own stake in RBS.
According to 69% of leading institutional investors, they believe that the treasury will begin selling off shares in the bank next year. This alludes to the fact that the economy is getting back to a healthy state and the treasury obviously believes that it can make some money from the sale of the bank’s shares.
This still doesn’t take away from the things that are going on right in our own back yard though. For example, RBS being fined £15m for false mortgage advice, or what about the likes of Lloyds and HSBC to name but a few adding to their PPI bill which in a space of 6 weeks, just earlier this month led to the total PPI bill increasing by a staggering £3 billion.
There’s much still going wrong over with the banks in this country. The next big mis-selling scandal is on the rise at the minute too. Packaged bank account claims hit an estimated 17,000 complaints in 2014 but that has significantly increased.
Claims Management Company
October 23, 2014 Daniel Lee HSBC, formally known as The Hong Kong and Shanghai Banking Corporation, was founded on March 3rd in 1865 by a Scotsman called Sir Thomas Sutherland in the British Colony of Hong Kong. It relocated it’s headquarters from Hong Kong to London in 1993 during the period that Hong Kong’s sovereignty switched from the UK to China.
HSBC is now the world’s second largest bank, with 6,600 offices spread across 80 countries in Asia, Africa, Europe and North and South America and has 125 million customers alone.
HSBC has consistently acquired smaller banks over the course of the last few decades. Possibly two of the banks we in the UK may be most familiar with would be Household Finance Corporation (HFC), and First Direct.
First Direct is an internet and telephone banking company with it’s headquarters in Leeds, offering current accounts and loans.
In 2004 First Direct introduced ‘First Directory’ to their customers, a system where services would be added to current accounts including such things as annual travel insurance and mobile phone insurance, for a fixed monthly charge. This is now commonly known as a Packaged Bank Account.
First Direct have consistently been voted for as the bank with the best levels of customer service. However, this could all be about to change as mis-sold Packaged Bank Account claims increase as they are doing at a rapid rate. Check to see if you may qualify to make a claim if you pay a monthly fee for your account.
HFC are one of the major players in offering consumer loans and store credit.
On the 16th of January 2008 HSBC owned division Household Finance Corporation (HFC) were fined £1.09 million due to treating the customers unfairly when selling Payment Protection Insurance (PPI). The regulator said that between 2005 and 2007 HFC sold PPI with 75% of loans, exposing 163,332** customers to paying for PPI without consenting to.
HSBC has played its fair part in the recent, and not so recent, scandals that have swamped the United Kingdom, with HSBC PPI claims reaching the millions since it was discovered they’d mis-sold Payment Protection Insurance and Packaged Bank Accounts, something which HSBC suspended sales of earlier this year.
In 2011 the Financial Services Authority (FSA) issued their largest fine at the time to HSBC because they had been offering inappropriate investment advice to their elderly customers. The £10.5 millions fine was issued due to advice given to 2,485 customers, some of whom were left with no investments. HSBC estimated the compensation pay out would reach approximately £30 million.
British Multinational bank Corporation HSBC were been fined £1.9 BILLION in 2012, as they had reportedly failed to prevent Mexican drug lords and cartels laundering money through their bank accounts. Would you feel comfortable banking with such people?
Could you have been mis-sold PPI or a Packaged Bank account by HSBC, First Direct or HFC? Millions have.
With our NO WIN NO FEE* service you can rest assured that it’s in our best interest to do all we can in order to secure you an offer of compensation.
Moreover, we deal with you claim from first to last, every step of the way. From checking whether you’ve had PPI by obtaining information from HCBC regarding all of your accounts via our fast-track system, to seeing whether you may qualify. We then deal with your bank or lender every step of the way so you can sit back and relax, knowing we are working on your case, using our professional expert team.
So, don’t delay, make your claim today.
HSBC PPI Claims
September 22, 2014 Daniel Lee HSBC Holdings are set to pay $550m (£335m) in order to resolve a US regulators claim made against them. It is stated that the British bank has made a number of false representations in the sale of mortgage bonds to the federal mortgage companies Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac before the financial crisis hit back in 2007/08.
This will come as a blow to HSBC as it only adds to the amount that they’ve already paid out for things like the Payment Protection Insurance (PPI) which they mis-sold on such a wide scale.
The settlement was announced last Friday, September 12th between the bank’s US unit and the Federal Housing Finance Agency (FHFA), the regulator of the two Government-controlled finance companies.
This agreement coincidentally came just three weeks before a trial that was set to start on September 29th in New York. In this trial, HSBC could have faced charges up to $1.6bn in damages.
This deal is the latest in a long line of 18 different lawsuits that the FHFA filed in 2011 in order to recover losses on $200bn in mortgage-backed securities which were sold to Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, which the US Govt. took control of amid the 2008 economic crisis.
After this revelation, the general public must find themselves asking, yet again “can the banks be trusted?”
If HSBC have been up to this over in the US, can anyone say that they haven’t been doing the same over here? Only a few weeks ago, RBS were fined £15 million for their mortgage advice failings so what’s to say that others haven’t been doing the same thing?
Of course, there’s not telling either way but trust in the big banks must be at an all-time low at the minute, especially after the PPI mis-selling scandal came to light in the mid-2000s.
Taking a side step away from PPI, there’s also come to light recently yet more reasons for trust in the banks to be at a severe low.
It is estimated that there are currently 1 in 5 of us here in the UK who have a packaged bank account and it’s come to light recently that these have been widely mis-sold too. Last year the Financial Ombudsman Service (FOS) received a total of 6,000 complaints about packaged bank accounts.
If you think that you’ve been mis-sold a PBA, you can make a packaged bank account claim with us today.
HSBC
September 22, 2014 Daniel Lee 13 banks are facing allegations of fraud in the US state of Virginia and there are three British banks amongst those.
Barclays, HSBC and the bailed out Royal Bank of Scotland are among the 13 and they’re facing a claim of $1.15bn (£700m) in damages in the US state of Virginia over the sale of mortgage bonds during the financial crisis.
Of course, this isn’t the only thing that these big British banks have found themselves in hot water over. Since the mid-2000s, when the PPI mis-selling scandal came to light, they’ve had to set aside billions of pounds in order to fairly compensate the millions of people who were mis-sold payment protection insurance.
The Virginia attorney general, Mark Herring has made the accusations against the 13 which relate to the sale of bonds to the state’s retirement fund from 2004 to 2010. According to Mr. Herring, the 13 banks packaged up very risky home loans as part of the bonds or securities.
These bonds and securities were then sold on to the Virginia Retirement System as AAA-rated bonds and the fund has the best part of 600,000 members which include teachers, employees from the city and county governments, state troopers and court employees.
There was a case filed in the Richmond Circuit Court which shows the actions of the banks in the run-up to the financial crisis. They continued to come under scrutiny by the authorities, potentially undermining attempts by banks to improve their reputations that had been repeatedly knocked by allegations about their behaviour.
According to the allegations, the banks fraudulently misrepresented the quality of the mortgages that they packaged up and sold to investors such as the Virginia Retirement system.
The allegations suggest that 40% of the mortgages that were sold on to the retirement fund had a higher risk of default than what was disclosed at the time that they were purchased. This led to $383m worth of losses.
HSBC has recently been under scrutiny for the mis-selling of mortgages in the US and they have recently agreed to pay $550 million to settle the dispute.
This was paid in order to settle a dispute where HSBC holdings faced $1.6bn in damages should the ruling have gone against them. To read more about this, click here.
If you think you have been mis-sold PPI, why not start your claim with us today by filling in our form online, or you can download yourself a PPI claim form and fill it in and get it sent back to us to launch your claim today.
British Banks
November 4, 2015 Daniel Lee In 1853, Halifax previously known as Halifax Building Society was founded, named after a small market town in West Yorkshire, becoming known as ‘Halifax plc’ in 1997 when it became a public limited company. Halifax, in it’s various formats, has historically been the largest supplier of residential mortgages and savings accounts in the United Kingdom.
In 2001 Bank of Scotland joined forces with Halifax, after agreeing to a £10.8 billion merger. This union became known as Halifax Bank of Scotland (HBOS).
In 2006, HBOS transferred all of Halifax’s assets and liabilities over to Bank of Scotland, and in doing so Halifax became a division of Bank of Scotland.
A takeover by Lloyds TSB of HBOS in January of 2009 was approved, and confirmation of the deal was released on 19th January 2009. This saw HBOS becoming part of the Lloyds Banking Group, which it continues to be to this day.
Halifax was founded 161 years ago, but only over the past 20 years, since the mass change overs have the problems emerged.
In the first 140ish years of existence there seemed to be little in the way of scandal surrounding Halifax, and it was generally seen as a trustworthy bank, as most banks were considered at the time. Only in the last 20 years or so has Halifax, and it’s new partners, been caught up in a web of lies, deceit and scandal.
Is it a coincidence that when Halifax ceased to answer to it’s customers, and started to trade for the benefit of it’s shareholders, that scandal after scandal started to come to light?
Is it a coincidence that in chasing profits to line the pockets of a few, that millions of loyal customers have been cheated out of their hard earned money?
Lloyds Banking Group is certainly the biggest culprit in the biggest financial scandal to hit the UK. Setting aside £10.4 BILLION so far to compensate innocent customers for the mis-selling of Payment Protection Insurance (PPI) sees the group footing 40% of the total PPI bill. Their bill continues to soar, adding a further £600 MILLION in July of 2014 and this will not be the last addition they make to the pot.
Halifax appeared to be trading morally and decently for 140 years, but since joining HBOS and Lloyds Banking Group there problems have started and complaints have been increasing at a worrying rate.
As if mis-selling policies in their millions wasn’t bad enough, Lloyds Banking Group along with most other lenders have also been caught rejecting valid PPI complaints. There’s a simple reason for this, with an estimated 9/10 rejected complaints not being referred up to the Financial Ombudsman Service (FOS), which in turn has saved the banking sector £17 BILLION in PPI compensation, according to our estimates.
After rejecting a significant number of complaints, they were also fined £4.3 MILLION by the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) in February of 2013 for delaying pay outs of compensation.
Lloyds Banking Group, like all banks we are currently aware of, have also been caught mis-selling Packaged Bank Accounts (PBA) to their customers.
Should the group be accountable for 40% of the mis-selling of PBA’s, much like they were for PPI, then this could see them having to set aside another significant amount of money to compensate customers of this new scandal, given our calculations that PBA mis-selling is worth £BILLIONS.
A recent fine dished out to Lloyds Banking Group of £28 MILLION from the FCA only compounds our worst fears that the banking sector refuses to change it’s ways and learn from it’s mistakes. It appears to lure of profits outweighs everything else. The fine was issued due to the banks’ continued push to sell products by pressurising staff with incentives and bonus targets, which clearly only ever leads to mis-selling.
It appears that Halifax’s decisions over the last 20 years, in becoming a public limited company, in forming HBOS, and in becoming part of the Lloyds Banking Group have had irreparable damage on the reputation and moral standing of this once trusted institution.
From being the largest provider of residential mortgages and savings accounts, to being part of the organization which is biggest culprit of mis-selling Payment Protection Insurance and Packaged Bank Accounts can only be put down to mis-management on a huge scale.
Halifax PPI claims have risen year on year since the scandal broke in the mid 2000’s. Indeed Halifax PPI claims make up a significant proportion of the 10 BILLION + that Lloyds Banking Group has set aside to compensate customers.
Your Money Claim deal with Halifax PPI claims on a daily basis. Our fast track system allows us to obtain information regarding all of your accounts and whether any of them have PPI, so there’s no requirement for you to have any paper work in order to launch a Halifax PPI claim.
Start your Halifax PPI claims today by simply filling in our on-line claim form or downloading a pack. Our experts are on hand via telephone, email or our live chat to answer your questions.
Halifax PPI Claims
