UK watchdog slaps Barclays over second PPI failure

Barclays Bank has been ordered to rectify its procedures for communicating with payment protection insurance (PPI) customers for a second time by the competition watchdog.

The bank again failed to send annual PPI reminders to some Littlewoods credit card customers, the Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) said.

In a statement the CMA said that between October 2016 and October 2017, Barclays failed to send reminders to 2,265 Littlewoods credit card customers with PPI policies.

Following that breach, Barclays wrote to all affected customers, providing a reminder of their right to cancel the policy and the offer of a refund. From this communication, it has so far paid out almost £336,000 in refunds to customers.

This first breach revealed Barclays failed to provide annual reminders to almost 10,000 PPI customers.

The CMA says it has now issued 'legal directions' to Barclays to put appropriate systems and procedures in place to prevent a similar incident from happening again.

CMA senior director of remedies, business and financial analysis, Adam Land said the annual reminder was an important measure so customers know they still have a PPI policy and how much it was costing them each year, as well as their right to cancel or switch.