Several major British banks, including Lloyds Banking Group, are involved in a scandal linked to the abusive and forced sale of credit insurance. Redressing the damage is much more costly than expected. According to the Financial Times, the total bill is expected to exceed 50 billion GBP (61.7 billion USD) for banks.
Lloyds Banking Group, the UK's third-largest bank in terms of assets, is particularly affected by the scandal. Its bill continues to grow. The bank has already set aside 20 billion GBP (24.7 billion USD) at the end of June 2019 and has just provided an additional 2 billion GBP (2.4 billion USD) to meet the increasing number of complaints.The aggrieved customers have showed up in great numbers in recent months.
The scandal dates back to the 1990s when several British banks marketed deceptive credit insurance. Some covers were sold without the customer's knowledge, while others did not cover the risks underwritten.
Other banks affected by the scandal, such as Barclays with 11.2 billion GBP (13.8 billion USD) in reserves and Royal Bank of Scotland, which allocated 5.3 billion GBP (6.5 billion USD) to compensate its customers.
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