Furious victims who were wrongly sold payment protection insurance have swamped the banks with demands for their money back.
The whopping compo bill is more than double the total £8.9bn cost of hosting last summer’s London Olympic Games.
A spokesman for consumer watchdog Which? said the £18.6bn figure, laid bare this week in banks’ annual reports, was staggering.
And the public looks set to get hit twice, with taxpayer-owned banks having to set aside some of the biggest amounts.
“It’s sneaky”
Clare Dawson
Lloyds TSB, 39% owned by the taxpayer, faces a £7.3bn PPI bill, while the Royal Bank of Scotland, 81% public-owned, has earmarked £2.2bn. Dozens of “claims handling” firms have sprung up to process claims for bank customers in exchange for a slice of their cash.
But websites also offer advice on how customers can do it themselves.
PPI is meant to cover loan repayments if a borrower falls ill or loses their job, but a string of banks sold policies to people who did not need it.
Pub kitchen worker Clare Dawson, 34, said she managed to get £3,200 back from the Halifax after being billed for years for credit card PPI that she did not even know she had bought. Clare, from Gloucestershire, said: “It’s sneaky.”
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