The FCA has fined Lloyds Bank, Bank of Scotland and The Mortgage Business £64m for failures in the handling of mortgage customers in payment difficulties.
The Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) has fined Lloyds Bank, Bank of Scotland and The Mortgage Business £64,046,800 for failures in relation to their handling of mortgage customers in payment difficulties or arrears.
The FCA has found that between April 2011 and December 2015 the banks’ systems and procedures for gathering information from mortgage customers in payment difficulties or arrears resulted in call handlers not consistently obtaining adequate information to assess customers’ circumstances and affordability, creating a risk that customers were treated unfairly.
The banks also employed a system that set a minimum percentage of a customer’s contractual monthly payment which a call handler was authorised to accept as a payment arrangement, without obtaining further authority from a senior colleague.
In practice, the system created a risk of inflexibility; call handlers may have failed to negotiate appropriate payment arrangements for customers as a result.
These risks were exacerbated when, as part of a simplification programme, the banks lost a large number of personnel with mortgage collections and recoveries expertise.
The FCA therefore found that the banks breached Principle 3 and Principle 6 of its Principles for Businesses between 7 April 2011 and 21 December 2015.
Some of the failings were identified by the banks as early as 2011, but although the FCA acknowledged the group's cooperation during the investigation, it found that the steps taken failed fully to rectify the issues.
Failings were then identified as part of a thematic review conducted by the FCA in 2013.
During 2014 and 2015 the banks took a number of further steps to address the concerns raised by the FCA and on several occasions informed the FCA they were on track to implement those improvements.
However, a further review by the FCA in July 2015 found that the banks had failed to make sufficient progress, and they were required to undertake a Skilled Person’s review.
The banks did not dispute the FCA’s findings and exercised their right, under the FCA’s partly contested case process, to ask the Regulatory Decisions Committee to assess the appropriate level of sanction.
The banks’ agreement to accept the FCA’s findings meant they qualified for a 30% discount. Otherwise, the FCA would have imposed a financial penalty of £91,495,400.
In July 2017, the banks implemented a group-wide redress scheme which included refunding all broken payment arrangement fees, arrears management fees and interest accrued on the fees and the refund of litigation fees if applied unfairly or, in some circumstances, automatically.
The banks have estimated that approximately 526,000 customers have received redress payments totalling £300m.
By November 2019, the banks had already made payments of approximately £259.9m to customers.
Mark Steward, executive director of enforcement and market oversight at the FCA, said: “Banks are required to treat customers fairly, even when those customers are in financial difficulties or are having trouble meeting their obligations.
"By not sufficiently understanding their customers’ circumstances, the banks risked treating unfairly more than a quarter of a million customers in mortgage arrears, over several years.
"In some cases, customers were treated unfairly, including vulnerable customers.
“Customers should still pay what is owed, but banks are obliged to treat their customers fairly when making new payment arrangements.
“Firms should take notice of the action we have taken today to ensure that their own treatment of customers meets our expectations.”
A spokesperson from Lloyds Banking Group said: “We have contacted all customers who were affected between 2011 and 2015 to apologise, and have already reimbursed all who were charged fees at the time.
"Customers do not need to take any action.
"We have since taken significant steps to enhance how we support mortgage customers experiencing financial difficulty, including investing in colleague training and procedures.”
