City watchdog dishes out £2.4m fine to CT Capital for historic failures to handle its PPI complaints process
CT Capital has today been slapped with a £2.4m fine by the City watchdog for historic failings in its Payment Protection Insurance (PPI) complaint handling procedures.
The Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) issued the £2,360,900 fine in relation to the mishandling of PPI complaints between May 2011 and November 2013, which resulted in customers missing out on redress repayments they were entitled.
The firm would have been fined just shy of £3m, but received a 20 per cent discount for agreeing to settle at an early stage of the watchdog's investigation.
In particular, the FCA criticised CT Capital, which is the parent company of a group of lenders and was responsible for tackling the PPI complaints on behalf of the group, for failing to put into place various provisions on the handling of such complaints until November 2011, despite these coming into force in December 2010.
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Even after these provisions were implemented, the FCA remarked that the Norwich-based CT Capital continued to run a flawed system for some time afterwards.
CT Capital has already shelled out roughly £74m in redressing customers, following FCA feedback in 2013 which pushed it to revise its process and review around 4,800 complaints.
"Failing to handle complaints appropriately means that firms risk treating customers unfairly for a second time and it's important that firms get this right," said Mark Steward, director of enforcement and market oversight at the FCA. "We have taken action against firms on numerous occasions and there's no excuse for firms continuing to get it wrong.
"We remain determined to ensure that firms put right the harm caused by PPI mis-selling and regain the trust of the public.
"We will continue to monitor how firms are dealing with complaints and will not hesitate to take action where we see firms not complying with their obligations."
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The average redress payment dished out to customers during the time period the fine relates to was £5,959.
Last year, the FCA issued a £117m fine to Lloyds Banking Group in respect of its PPI failings, which is the largest ever retail fine levied by the financial services regulator.
Figures released by the Financial Ombudsman Service last month showed that PPI still topped the list of the most complained about financial products, with the Ombudsman still receiving up to 4,000 cases on the product each week.
However, the mis-selling scandal could soon be put to bed, as the FCA last year set a 2018 deadline for people to get their claims in.