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August 29, 2014 
Daniel Lee You may have seen recently that RBS have been fined almost £15 million for “serious failings” in the mortgage advice that they have been giving out to their customers.
That’s all well and good that they’ve been fined by the regulator for their diabolical showing when it comes to their customers’ best interests, but what does this mean for you, the general public?
We’ve decided to take a bit of a deeper look into the amount of people that have been affected by this, how you can find out if you’re one of the ones that has been affected, what the advisers were doing wrong, if you could be entitled to receive compensation and whether or not you should be concerned about having taken a mortgage out from either RBS or NatWest recently.
From June 1st 2011 to March 2013, both RBS and NatWest sold a combined 177,000 mortgages to their customers. Of these almost 200,000 mortgages, 30,000 were advised sales and it is these customers that are the ones that will have been affected.
The sales of 164 mortgages that were made during this time period were reviewed by the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) and they found that only two of those customers were given the correct advice.
They did however, in their report, conclude that every one of the 30,000 customers who were sold a mortgage on an advised basis in that time period is almost certainly “at risk of not having received suitable advice”.
You may have been given the advice over the telephone or face to face, either way, you may have still been given the wrong advice. According to research, 87% of the affected sales were made in a branch.
If this was you, you should expect to receive a letter from either RBS or NatWest that will invite you to bring up and talk to them about any concerns you may have about the way that the mortgage was sold to you.
If you don’t receive a letter, or any correspondence from the banks, you can call the bank on 0800 678 1924 or you could even write to them at: Mortgage Case Handling Team, Mortgage Services, PO Box 12201, Birmingham, B2 2NA.
Whether they were sitting down and going through the advice face to face with you, or if they were doing it over the phone, there was a lot of things that the advisers were failing to do.
One thing that advisers were required to do in order to perform a proper check was an affordability test. During these ‘tests’ instead of asking detailed questions, advisers were assessing outgoings using ONS stats on average household expenditure as well as information on the customer’s loan and their credit card borrowing.
The advisers were failing to check other things properly though, such as the customer’s budgets. This meant that things like travel and child care, that would have more than likely been missed, could have affected their ability to borrow.
One thing that it was found that a lot of the sales advisers were doing is giving out their own predictions on base rate movements and advising on products based on their not-so-accurate predictions. One adviser was even recorded as saying: “If we don’t increase rates with this double-dip recession, the economy is in dire straits. Rates will rise. If you take a two-year deal then rates will be higher after this period.”
According to the FCA report, one of the major causes of the majority of these problems was the bank’s IT systems. The systems used by the banks did not allow the advisers to properly record the results of the all-important “fact find”.
This is the process that is needed to be carried out by ALL mortgage lenders in order for them to properly determine the suitability and affordability of all of their products. One of the major flaws in the system that was being used at the time is that is used a text box that restricted the answers that could be given to a total of 500 characters.
The FCA has, as we’re all aware, fined the bank close to £15 million, but they have stopped short of insisting that the bank must compensate their customers.
The reasoning behind this is down to the fact that, overall, while sales processes were almost all non-compliant, there was no extensive consumer detriment that has been discovered in their reviewing of the cases.
That doesn’t mean to say that there were no cases found as there were in fact five of these cases found. The fact that five of these cases were found, meant that these were cases where there had been improper advice given or the customer had received an unfair outcome.
The Financial Ombudsman Service (FOS) has recommended that anyone who is concerned about a mortgage sold to them on an advised basis during the period mentioned above should contact the banks using the details we provided above.
Since March 2013, the bank is insistent that things have improved and chief executive, Ross McEwan has come out and said that the bank has been working hard on ensuring things were put right.
Speaking about the overhauling of the processes that were already in place when he joined the bank, Mr McEwan said: “When I joined the bank we completely overhauled our processes, and took all our mortgage advisers off the front line for an extensive period of time to get the training required,”
A promise like this will undoubtedly make any homeowners wary. Regardless of the fact that the FCA (formerly FSA) made the banks more than aware that they were concerned about their sales processes going as far back as 2011, both RBS and NatWest failed to take any action until late 2012.
It was between then and March 2013 that the banks started to, in dribs and drabs, pull their whole sales force and set about getting them retrained.
This scandal certainly had very little effect on the banks and it certainly didn’t stop them from going ahead with their mortgage sales and in the summer of last year, they made an announcement that they would be increasing their mortgage market share with a number of different things taking place including recruiting new mortgage advisers.
RBS Mortgage Fine
August 28, 2014 Daniel Lee The Royal Bank of Scotland is set to receive yet another fine, but this time it’s over mortgage advice, which makes a change to the usual news regarding their part in the huge PPI mis-selling scandal.
The FCA (Financial Conduct Authority) is dishing out the fine to the bank over the issue of inappropriate mortgage advice to customers. They said that only two of the 164 sales that it reviewed between June 2011 and March 2013 were good enough to have met the standard required overall in a sales process.
The FCA also found that RBS and their retail branch, NatWest didn’t consider the full extent of a customer’s budget when making a recommendation. The staff were also found to have not advised customers properly about what mortgage term was appropriate for them.
According to the FCA, there doesn’t seem to be any evidence that there is widespread detriment to customers but both RBS and NatWest are set to be contacting 30,000 customers so that they can raise any concerns that they may have about the advice that they received.
In response to the findings of the regulator at the end of 2012, RBS has come out and said that they have overhauled their mortgage advice and sales process and they have retrained all of their mortgage advisers.
The predecessor to the FCA, the Financial Services Authority had raised a number of concerns about branch and telephone sales at RBS in November 2011 but it was almost a year later when the two firms started to take steps to put things right.
They even went on to make assurances to the FSA in July 2012 that the necessary changes were well under way to address the regulators’ concerns.
Speaking about the fine, Tracey McDermott, director of enforcement and financial crime at the FCA has said: “Where we raise concerns with firms we expect them to take effective action to resolve them without delay. This simply failed to happen in this case.”
She added: “Taking out a mortgage is one of the most important financial decisions we can make. Poor advice could cost someone their home so it’s vital that the advice process is fit for purpose. Both firms failed to ensure that their customers were getting the best advice for them.”
Ross McEwan, who ran the RBS retail unit from August 2012 until he received his promotion to group chief executive in October last year has come out and said that the mortgage advice failings were “unacceptable and should never have happened”.
RBS Fine
November 13, 2014 Daniel Lee Good news apparently! Co-operative Bank have released their half year figures which show a loss of over £75m. The much troubled bank have also added £39m to their compensation pot, of which £5m is to be added to the Co-operative PPI bill.
It was certainly drummed into me for years growing up that the Co-operative Bank were different from the rest. Ethical investments and a high moral standing was apparently what the bank stood by. It appears now though that this ethos was nothing more than a clever bit of marketing.
Surely a bank with such strong pillars wouldn’t be seen ripping customers off by mis-selling products such as Payment Protection Insurance (PPI) and Packaged Bank Accounts?
Surely a bank with a culture of doing the right thing wouldn’t negatively impact it’s customers by breaching the Consumer Credit Act when selling mortgages?
Surely such a bank wouldn’t be found to be so incompetent to have a huge undiscovered financial black hole in it’s accounts to the tune of £1.5 BILLION?
How wrong we were. The illusion is shattered and we find ourselves with a bank that is just like the rest, driven by greed at the expense of it’s customers.
I admit I was probably more disappointed that The Co-operative Bank was found to have been mis-selling PPI and Packaged Bank Accounts than I was of any other bank.
It came as no surprise at all that the likes of Lloyds, Halifax, RBS, Natwest, HSBC, Barclays, Bank of Scotland, MBNA and Santander had been cheating customers out of billions. These banks have been morally vacant for decades.
We’ve had a few new banks too that fell straight into the trap whilst claiming to provide ‘a new way of banking’. Banks such as Sainsbury’s, Tesco, Asda, First Direct.
They’ve all been caught with their hands in the till, so to speak.
With millions of people yet to stake their claim, to the BILLIONS of compensation set aside, there is still a long long way to go before the time of the great financial scandals is over.
Your Money Claim are financial claim experts.
Have you had a mortgage, loan, hire purchase agreement, credit card, store card or bank account? Whether they are still active, or whether they’ve been paid off or closed, it’s worth checking to see whether you’ve had PPI, or you’ve paid for a Packaged Bank Account.
Don’t worry if you don’t have the paperwork, or you’re not sure if you qualify for a PPI refund, or if you qualify for a Packaged Bank Account refund. Your Money Claim, with it’s No Win No Fee* service can carry out the necessary checks, and will work on your behalf every step of the way.
Your Money Claim is used to beating the banks, and there is nothing better than that telephone call to inform somebody that they are thousands, or even tens of thousands of pounds better off.
So why wait? Simply fill in the online form, drop us an email, give us a call, or use the live chat facility. Friendly, professional experts are on hand to answer your questions.
Co-operative PPI bill
October 13, 2015 Daniel Lee We’ve all seen the media hype and general hysteria towards payday lenders, but were you aware that in many instances a bank overdraft fee is actually charged at a higher APR than that of a payday lender?! The banks tend to want to keep this quiet, for obvious reasons.
Let’s take a look at the truth behind the amount of money generated for the banks by their astronomical interest and fees charged on overdrafts, and unauthorised overdrafts.
The Payday industry is worth just over £2 billion a year, and with new rules set to come into force which include the capping of interest rates, this figure is likely to drop significantly.
When we compare this to the huge £8 billion a year that is generated for banks, it really shows the extent of the cover-up. With the media generally based in London along with the major banks it’s not difficult to understand why the media don’t tend to run this story, as I imagine it could ruin a few cosy lunch dates!
Let’s take a quick look at the differences by looking at some examples between a payday loan, and the cost of going over your agreed overdraft by £100…
A payday loan of £100, taken over 30 days will typically cost around £30 in interest, thus being £130 to repay.
HSBC & First Direct : £5 daily bank fees up to £80, thus being £180 to repay.
Lloyds : £10 daily bank fees up to £80, thus being £180 to repay.
RBS : £6 daily bank fees up to £90, thus being £190 to repay.
Natwest : £6 daily bank fees up to £90, thus being £190 to repay.
Halifax : £10 daily bank fees up to £100, thus being £200 to repay.
Barclays : £5 daily bank fees up to £35 (with additional £4.50), thus being £139.50 to repay.
Santander : £10 daily bank fees up to £150, thus being £250 to repay.
What would you choose?!
Now I’m not advocating the use of payday lenders as that’s a personal choice and something that I recommend everybody looks at carefully before making a decision. My aim is to point out that banks, as usual, are getting away with treating their customers with utter contempt in order to satisfy shareholders.
There have been so many financial scandals uncovered over the last few years it’s almost difficult to know where to start, but I’d just like to highlight two that have had a direct impact on UK consumers.
If you haven’t heard about the HUGE Payment Protection Insurance (PPI) scandal, where have you been?! With an estimated 34 million PPI policies sold, worth a staggering £50 billion, it’s seen as the biggest financial scandal ever to hit the UK. There are billions of pounds in compensation yet to be claimed, and millions of UK consumers who have still to make their claim. I estimate that there are millions out there who are unaware they’ve been mis-sold PPI, such were the tactics of the banks and lenders, who placed PPI onto credit agreements without the knowledge of customers.
Next up is a relatively new scandal that is quickly gathering pace. Do you pay, or have you paid, a monthly fee for your bank account? There are thought to be over 10 million active Packaged Bank Accounts out there, with monthly fees ranging from £5 to £30 per month in exchange for certain ‘benefits and perks’ such as AA cover, mobile phone insurance and travel insurance to name a few. There are many reasons for a potential mis-sale of these accounts and I expect this to be the next big mis-selling news.
So…if you’d like the experts to look into whether you’ve been mis-sold PPI, or a bank account, look no further. Your Money Claim deal with and beat the banks on a daily basis. Even if you’ve settled your mortgage, loan, credit card, hire purchase, store card, or you have an old bank account Your Money Claim have fast-track systems in place to carry out the checks.
To get your claim underway simply fill in the online form, or contact Your Money Claim via telephone, email or via the live chat function, and experts will be on hand every step of the way, from finding out whether you qualify, to hopefully seeing you with a nice big cheque.
Bank fees
October 7, 2014 Daniel Lee Clydesdale Bank, which includes Yorkshire Bank, have followed suit from Lloyds, HSBC, Barclays, Santander, and RBS recently, and added to their PPI compensation pot.
With an additional £75m being added to the existing £386m previously set aside, this sees the Clydesdale Bank PPI bill rise by almost 20% to a whopping £461m. We fully expect this to be added to significantly before the biggest mis-selling scandal ever to hit the UK is over.
Chief Executive David Thorburn has admitted the banks handling of PPI complaints had not been consistent.
This is a huge understatement. Clydesdale Bank were recently fined £9.8million for unfair treatment of customers.
Perhaps even more worrying is the fact that they’ve also been caught destroying customer records in an attempt to avoid having to investigate PPI claims.
Whilst we appreciate yet another apology from Mr Thorburn, we believe it’s about time he stopped apologising and fixed his bank.
Indeed, Mr Thorburn has claimed that the bank have introduced a new PPI complaint handling process that he hopes will see claims being dealt with more consistently, and fairer. We welcome this news, but with PPI being in the news now for a number of years we are staggered it’s taken so long.
Whilst there is no actual deadline in place for when you can claim, we would strongly urge people to stake their claim as soon as possible. We advise this as it’s clear from tactics employed Clydesdale, banks and lenders will try to put up as much of a fight as possible.
Putting your claim in the hands of experts is your opportunity to avoid having to deal with the banks and their underhand tactics. Your Money Claim have already reclaimed millions for our customers. We beat the banks every day!
Your Money Claim offers the complete service, from checking to see whether you’ve had PPI, to dealing with the banks every step of the way, we do the work on your behalf and there’s nothing we like more than that phone call when we tell our customers that we’ve secured compensation that makes them thousands, or even tens of thousands of pounds better off.
Clydesdale Bank PPI bill
October 7, 2014 Daniel Lee With the amount of money bankers get and the money they’ve made by mis-selling products like PPI, you’d be forgiven for thinking that these people get paid enough to do the job that they’re doing, never mind the bonuses they get too.
Well, the Royal Bank of Scotland has recently unveiled plans to give 10 of their top executives £3.5 million worth of shares. This has come about as RBS attempt to avoid strict EU rulings on bonuses that are in place within the banking industry.
RBS was bailed out during the financial crisis and they are currently 81% owned by the taxpayer and in 2013 they reported losses of £8.2 billion. These losses were linked to the continued restructuring costs and misconduct fines.
Earlier this year, RBS planned to pay bonuses twice the size of their employees’ salaries but this was blocked by the Government. This plan was blocked by the Treasury who said that there would be no rise whilst RBS was ‘still in recovery’.
These new rules mean that while the bank is still taxpayer owned, if they want to make any pay outs like the planned bonus ones, they need to go and get approval from their shareholders.
EU Rules
If any bankers were to be paid any bonuses, due to EU rules they can only be paid annual bonuses which are worth the same as one year’s salary or double the employee’s salary if shareholders approve the package.
The bank has previously stated that they need to be able to compete with rival banks when it comes to remuneration or they will be faced with losing their top talent. In response to this, the Government has since said that they will not allow the bonuses to rise while they still see the bank as being in recovery.
The Head of RBS’s ‘bad bank’, Rory Cullinan is the one who set to receive the biggest pay out of the lot. He is set to receive shares worth £530,000 which is the as him receiving 100% of his salary so far this year.
In slightly more positive news surrounding RBS, the new Chief Executive Ross McEwan has surrendered his 2014 bonus for a period of 18-months.
McEwan, 56, who took up his new role in October last year, will take no bonus for his role in the bank for the time he was involved last year and also the whole of this year however, he is taking a £1m salary so it isn’t like he’s in need of anymore money.
Since the banking and financial crisis started in 2008 when the UK slowly started slipping into a recession, the culture at banks and more specifically, the culture around bankers bonuses, has come under much scrutiny.
Last month it was revealed that British banks are set to face their toughest bonus rules under new claw back plans that were announced. These plans also suggest that the bankers could have their bonuses taken off them even after they’ve been paid them.
So, it would seem that the bankers aren’t happy with what they already earn; they want even more when it comes to money. Not like they’ve made enough out of the general public.
In case you’d forgotten, the banks have been guilty of mis-selling a number of different products such as PPI and packaged bank accounts. If you feel like you’re a victim of being mis-sold one of these products then you can start your claim with us here at Your Money Claim today.
RBS Bonuses
