Britain's top financial ombudsman has questioned allegations by high street lenders that many of the claims against them for payment protection insurance compensation are fraudulent.

Natalie Ceeney, chief ombudsman and chief executive of the Financial Ombudsman Service, said she disagreed with the banks’ accusations of fraud and that often claims dismissed as without merit turned out instead to be justified. “Of the cases we get where the banks say categorically there was no PPI, we see about a quarter where just by asking a few more questions there was. So yes, I do have concerns that a lot of mud is being thrown around here,” said Ms Ceeney. Lloyds Banking Group chief executive, Antonio Horta-Osorio, hit out in May at the number of bogus PPI claims banks were receiving. “We have to stop this. It’s fraud,” said Mr Horta-Osorio, speaking at the time of Lloyds’ half-year results. Lloyds has set aside more than £4bn to meet the cost of PPI redress, but has complained that more than 50pc of the compensation requests it receives from some claims management companies are spurious.....Read more here: Banks are wrong on PPI 'fraud', says top ombudsman Natalie Ceeney - Telegraph