M&S Bank added £128m to their provisions for compensating customers mis-sold Payment Protection Insurance (PPI) last year.

Despite the link to its reputable high street stores, the Marks and Spencer financial arm has now set aside a total of £400m and joined some of Britain’s biggest high street banks in recently increasing the amount set aside for PPI refunds.

It is a 35% rise on the previous year and also came with a warning from the bank that it is highly unsure on ‘the eventual cost of redress’ suggesting even more could follow.

After announcing £52m in provisions back in 2012 this latest allocation is the second highest M&S Bank have been forced to set aside, with the bank anticipating they will receive almost a quarter of a million complaints about PPI.

Over 231,000 complaints are expected, a figure which represents almost half the total PPI policies sold by M&S Bank.

After an acquisition in 2004 the bank is jointly owned by HSBC, who themselves have set aside £3.3bn for mis-sold PPI.

Lloyds and Santander have both recently announced further increases, as financial firms try to forecast the amounts required to resolve PPI complaints up until the deadline of August 2019.

Set by the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA), the deadline is intended to bring an end to the mis-selling saga. However the industry watchdog has estimated that as many as 30m consumers with up to 64m policies could have been affected.

Almost £26.5bn has already been paid out so far to UK consumers who have complained about the way in which they were mis-sold PPI.

Despite recording 13m complaints and admitting they do not know how many more are yet to claim, the industry watchdog still placed a deadline on all PPI complaints.

It is estimated that £50bn worth of PPI policies were sold in total in the UK over the past 10-15 years, and some commentators are concerned that many will miss out due to the deadline.

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