It was Britain’s biggest-ever banking scandal, with almost every bank systematically duping customers into buying billions of pounds worth of useless insurance. Payment protection insurance (PPI) was supposed to pay out if someone with a bank loan lost their income through illness or redundancy. The policies could cost thousands of pounds, but borrowers often didn’t need them or couldn’t have claimed on them anyway, for example if they were self-employed.

Because the banks made more profit from the PPI than the loans, their bosses encouraged staff to lie to customers, telling them they would not get the loan unless they took out the insurance. Today, after more than a decade of complaints, regulatory investigations and legal battles, it is payback time. Reluctant banks are finally having to write millions of cheques worth billions of pounds to compensate the customers they wronged. The scale of the task is mammoth. The worst three culprits – Lloyds, Barclays and Royal Bank of Scotland – have publicly admitted that PPI mis-selling will cost them £3.2 billion, £1.2 billion and £1.1 billion respectively....Read more here--: Stranded: Fury of bank victims in the big PPI payout shambles