The number of complaints from customers who claim they were mis-sold packaged bank accounts has risen, according to the industry’s watchdog.
Packaged bank accounts are often labelled gold or platinum accounts, with monthly fees of between £5 and £25. They offer a range of additional services, including insurance, cheaper loans and other benefits.
The Ombudsman is now seeing about 1,000 complaints about packaged accounts every week; in comparison, there were only 21,348 such complaints in the whole of 2014, and just 5,667 in 2013.
The complaints are either because people were signed up to the accounts without asking, the bank never cancelled them after a request to do so, or the benefits – such as insurance – were inapplicable to them.
Royal Bank of Scotland, Barclays and Lloyds have set aside £732 million between them to compensate customers for possible mis-sold packaged accounts, fuelling concerns that it may escalate into a scandal the size of mis-sold PPI.
