Bank of Scotland fined over complaints errors by FSA
Originally posted by 5corpio
Customers of the Bank of Scotland are expected to receive £17m in compensation following mishandling of complaints about investment products.

The Financial Services Authority (FSA) has fined the bank £3.5m after it found that many complaints were rejected when they should have been upheld. Policies were often sold to older customers with little knowledge of investing. The bank has apologised and will review thousands of cases.

Failures
The bank has agreed to review 8,614 rejected complaints relating to investment advice given from February 2004 to the end of 2009. In addition, the bank will also investigate a further 7,903 investment sales to Halifax and Bank of Scotland customers, regardless of whether the customers made a complaint or not.

This is expected to lead to compensation payments of more than £17m, with £2.4m already having been paid out by the bank.

This was triggered by an investigation into 2,592 complaints about five different investment policies between July 2007 and October 2009.

They were the Bank of Scotland's Collective Investment Plan, the Personal Investment Plan, the Guaranteed Growth Bond, the ISA Investor and the Guaranteed Investment Plan.

The FSA said that an internal review by the bank found that 45% of these complaints should have been upheld rather than rejected........Read more HERE