Claims management firms have taken almost a quarter of the £22.2bn paid out for payment protection insurance (PPI) compensation.
The National Audit Office said companies that handle such claims had taken between £3.8bn and £5bn from April 2011 to November 2015. The NAO said mis-selling of financial products was still a "major problem". It said the Financial Conduct Authority lacked evidence on whether its actions were helping to reduce mis-selling. Amyas Morse, head of the National Audit Office, said the information that the spending watchdog had access to, such as customer complaints, did not show any clear reduction in the extent of mis-selling. "The FCA cannot be confident that its actions are reducing the overall level of mis-selling, and it has further to go to show it is achieving value for money," he said.
Risks remain

The cost of running the FCA, the Financial Ombudsman Service (FOS) and Financial Services Compensation Scheme came to £834m a year. Although fines appear to have substantially reduced financial incentives for firms to mis-sell, the complexity of products, sales incentives and company cultures meant the risks remained. Some 12 million customers have been paid compensation by banks and other financial organisations for mis-sold PPI......Read more here