Where you watching Prime Ministers Questions yesterday? Ok, so that’s 3 of you, but this session gave us all an insight as the PM revealed more about the new Financial Services Bill. The Bill was brought up as Brown tried to dodge a question about the bank charges test case result and in doing so he disclosed some interesting information about future finance related legal cases.

The Financial Services Bill will ring in some essential changes to the way banks, building societies and lenders are regulated, but it’ll introduce one feature in particular that’s going to make a massive difference. As a result of the Bill, the Financial Services Authority (FSA) will gain ‘Class Action’ powers that enable it to bring a number individual PPI claims together and fight their cases as one. This means that 100 people complaining about one particular bank can have all their cases and evidence put forward in one single hearing against that bank. Powerful stuff.

As if we hadn’t heard enough about banks and lenders cheating customers into paying for worthless Payment Protection Insurance (PPI), yet another tale of bankers greed has emerged. Roy Barker, 56, paid £22,000 in PPI payments ALONE to FirstPlus, a subsidiary of Barclays. Then. when Roy fell ill with Cancer and couldn’t make his loan repayments, he tried to claim on his £22,000 insurance policy only to find he was not eligible due to mis-selling. As if that wasn’t enough, FirstPlus then started repossession proceedings.

With this level of deceit and irresponsibility it’s no wonder that the number of PPI claims being made against lenders has reached an average of 750 a week. Thankfully, Roy complained to the Financial Ombudsman about his situation and now he has secured his home and had the PPI payments refunded. The banks can’t get away with this disrespect any longer and you can read the entire story at the Daily Mail’s website.

The jig is up. Payment Protection Insurance (PPI) is a scam, it’s been mis-sold, mis-placed and mis-trusted but why did the banks, lenders and providers take the wee wee out of us so much? This might explain it: When you took out a PPI policy with a borrowing, be it a mortgage, credit card or loan; the sales person typically received 80% commission based on your initial premium. So you can imagine they were some-what keen to sell.

As if that wasn’t enough, according to the Competition Commission, when someone did actually need their policy and made a PPI claim due to unemployment or illness, they were turned away. In fact, only 14% of claims were ever paid out on which equates to £14 for every £100 taken in premiums. Scandalous doesn’t quite cut it.

Payment Protection Insurance (PPI) provider Paymentshield is making over 60 of its staff redundant due to a duplication in job roles after their recent takeover by Towergate. This figure represents 20% of their entire workforce witht the number of employees dropping from 300 to under 240..

The majority of the staff are based at the firm’s Southport office and are no doubt casualties of the recent fall from grace for PPI. After multiple accouts of mis-selling and hundreds of thousands of PPI claims against insurers, this form of cover has had few supporters of late. Paymentshield are probably just the first of many providers that will be hit by the lack of trust in PPI from the banking public.

I’d like to, if I may, discuss Free Banking. Now I understand £100’s of billions of tax-payers money being pumped into the banks might not be described as ‘free’ but I’m talking account services here. Us Brits expect free banking, we don’t even think about an alternative,  it’s free to have and use an account but it aint like that across the water, in both directions.

In Europe and the US, customers pay monthly fees for their account along with charges on most transactions and with the raft of changes proposed by HM Government, it’s only a matter of time before our Bentley boys begin charging for the basics.

The financial institutions have already voiced their thoughts on the matter, Nationwide Building Society believes that a proposed change to credit card T’s & C’s could cost banks more than £500 million in lost revenue. And if the bank charges case rules against the banks then they stand to lose an estimated £10 billion, how will they cover that gaping whole? We haven’t got any tax money left.

Another large expense for them is the hundreds of thousands of PPI claims which will cost another few billion. All these positive steps towards a better banking system are necessary but we should be under no illusion – they are not cost-free.

If you took a poll of the British public on their opinion of Payment Protection Insurance (PPI), I should think there’d be a split of two results. Half would probably spit on the ground when you mention the acronym PPI and the other half wouldn’t know what you are talking about.

One thing’s for sure, no-one would sing the praises the insurance cover, unless of course one of the people you asked was Tony Byrne, managing director of IFA Wealth and Tax Management. Unsurprisingly, he isn’t thinking about all the PPI compensation claims when he tells FT his thoughts on the FSA and Payment Protection Insurance.

The banking public have all had their run ins with the banks over the last few years and the majority of us have come out of it worse off. Whether it was unfair bank charges, mis-sold PPI or just the billion pound taxpayers bailout, those ‘trusted’ institutions have had more of our money than they deserve.

But there are a group of people who’ve had to suffer in silence – the employees. I’m not talking the Bentley driving, long driveway owning head honchos, but the thousands of branch staff across the UK. Their jobs, like so many other UK jobs, have been under threat since the downturn and with the latest EU ruling to break up banks, it’s a cert that many will go.

After yesterdays post about the FSA slapping a £770,000 fine on Swinton for mis-selling PPI, it’s refreshing to see a Company come out and respond in a humble fashion to the penalty imposed. We thought it only fair to share with you what they said…

“Swinton takes the matter very seriously and will be contacting all customers concerned. The company apologises to any customer affected, and has set up a dedicated unit to deal with the PPI cases.

The company takes the view that the simple, low-cost PPI product it sold, (which cost £15 or £20), was different to that more commonly sold for many hundreds or even thousands of pounds alongside mortgages and loans in the rest of the financial services industry.

The company did not deliberately set out to breach FSA rules or to disadvantage customers and acted in good faith in the development of its sales process which it believed was reasonable and proportionate for the low cost of the product.”

It goes on and if you’ve eaten your lunch with half an hour to spare, you can read it here.

Great News! The Financial Services Authority (FSA) have fined insurance broker Swinton £770,000 for mis-sold PPI policies. And it gets better for over 480,000 Swinton customers as the broker will offer refunds on payment protection insurance (PPI) policies. Margaret Cole, director of enforcement and financial crime at the FSA said: “Nearly half a million policies were sold to customers who didn’t necessarily require them”.

As well as Swinton, the FSA fined mortgage lender GMAC- RFC £2.8m for excessive charges and starting repossession proceedings before considering other options. This action comes a week after the watchdog revealed PPI and bank charges complaints have risen significantly, compared to the same period last year, to 854,253 in the last 6 months.