Credit card company CCUK Finance has filed a lawsuit in the High Court demanding £1.6bn (approximately AU$2.8 billion) in damages for its purchase of Monument, a sub-prime lender it bought from Barclays in 2007. The claim stems from the mis-selling of payment protection insurance and is one of the nation’s biggest to date.
CCUK Finance is the UK subsidiary of a US-based firm previously called CompuCredit. It purchased Monument from Barclays for a reported £390m – Barclays had bought Monument in 2002 for around $650m from US subprime lender Providian. In the last half of 2016, 160,650 complaints have been made about Barclay’s insurance products.
Barclays said it will vigorously defend the claim of £1bn in compensation and £600,000 for alleged misrepresentation. “Over the last 10 years we have operated within the parameters of the deal agreed with CompuCredit and believe their recent claims against us are baseless and without merit. We will be vigorously defending our position," said the bank in a statement.
UK banks have paid over £34bn to settle PPI claims so far. The FCA has set a cut-off date of August 2019 for further claims from consumers.
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