Payment protection beefs up by two thirds in second half of 2010

Complaints by customers about payment protection insurance continue to spiral, according to the latest FSA figures.

The watchdog’s latest complaints statistics shows that the number of number of PPI-related grievances about increased by 63% to 434,596 in the last six months of 2010 alone.

Complaints about PPI made up the majority of the ‘general insurance and pure protection’ category, which was up by 37% to 710,678 in the second half of the year. Of these grievances, 454,193 were the result of ‘advising selling and arranging’, the FSA said

The increase in the volume of PPI complaints dwarfed those for the financial services as a whole, which increased by 3% to 1,795,182 in the second half of 2010.

The FSA also said that grievances about PPI mis-selling may reflect the big jump in redress for general insurance and protection products, which was up 15% to £319m. This represented by far the biggest chunk of the total redress bill which rose by 11% to £454m.