It looks like Barclays is being hit by payment protection insurance (PPI) issues not only in terms of redress costs but also when it comes to customer service and public relations.
It was just in August that the Competition and Markets Authority issued legal directions after the financial services firm, for the second time, violated the PPI market investigation order 2011 – failing to remind, as mandated, over 2,000 credit card PPI customers about their existing policies, how much they cost and their right to switch, due to a technical problem. Then this week Barclays chair John McFarlane (pictured) made headlines after pointing to bogus claims and stating that portions of Britain have turned into fraudsters.
Now the London-headquartered investment bank is saying sorry for another PPI misstep.
It turns out some customers had been provided wrong information, particularly those whose queries were coursed through the likes of claims management companies (CMCs), according to a You & Yours report by the BBC. Prospective claimants had been told they weren’t sold PPI when apparently they held policies.
Barclays, which said only around 1% of those who inquired through a third party were mis-informed, placed the blame on an error with its online checking tool that allowed ‘bulk’ requests. CMCs and solicitors were able to make multiple – as many as 50 – queries in one go, but the results weren’t always accurate.
“We identified through our own review that a very small percentage of customers were given the wrong information when they contacted Barclays via a claims management company to find out whether they had ever held a PPI policy on their account,” the report quoted Barclays as saying.
“We are proactively contacting everyone who has been impacted and we will be registering a new complaint on their behalf to put things right as soon as possible. We would like to apologise to these customers for the level of service they received.”
