If you have had an account where you pay a monthly fee with the Yorkshire Bank/Clydesdale Bank you can potentially look at this being refunded. The Signature account which was the fee-based packaged account with the Yorkshire Bank/Clydesdale Bank has come under scrutiny from the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA). In recent years, and following a wide ranging report several years ago, any mis-sale can be addressed by way of a refund which includes not only the payments being made, but also the accumulated interest and penalty interest to compensate clients.
We have been dealing with the mis-sale of Packaged Bank Accounts (PBA) since the publication of this report a couple of years ago and we are seeing a dramatic increase in not only complaints which are being upheld against the Yorkshire Bank/Clydesdale Bank, but also the level of refunds which are increasing as a result of a large number of these claims being found in favour of clients.
The Packaged Bank facility is an account which was set up by the major Banks several years ago in order to generate considerable revenue for the operation of current bank accounts. In order to justify the charging of a monthly fee the Bank (in this case the Yorkshire Bank/Clydesdale Bank) provided various elements of cover ranging from travel insurance through to mobile phone cover in order to justify the fee that they were looking to charge on a monthly basis to its clients. Many of its fees throughout the Banks range between £10 and £30. As has been the case with the mis-selling of Payment Protection Insurance (PPI) over the last few years, the Banks have again shown (and the Yorkshire Bank/Clydesdale Bank are no different) that they have a complete disregard for the client’s protection in relation to selling financial products correctly. As such they have promoted and pushed the sale of these accounts in a way that the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) has deemed to be unfit, and therefore can be challenged by clients.
In recent years the various Banks have been paying out considerable sums of money in relation to the mis-sale of Payment Protection Insurance (PPI) and the Banks are now paying (whilst not quite as much) substantial sums for the mis-sale of the Packaged Bank Accounts (PBA), whereby recent figures are showing refunds heading towards £1billion.
We have been dealing with large numbers of these cases in recent months. Over the last 2 years we have seen a tremendous increase in claims where people are questioning how they were sold the product, namely that they believed that they required the particular accounts in order to maintain their Banking Relationship with their Bank. This was not the case and if, as a client, you felt in any way hard done by, in the way that the Bank promoted the products and/or gave no opportunity of looking at other facilities which would have been available, then the fees that you have paid since inception of the account can be challenged. If compensation is awarded, this can include interest from the date of sale through to the time of a refund.