PPI

The UK's Financial Conduct Authority has, far too late, waded into the scandal over businesses that offer completely unnecessary, and very costly, services relating to the mis-selling of Personal Protection Insurance. The industry around selling what amounts to little more than form-filling assistance and which has collected in excess of GBP1,000 million, has force-fed advertising and is now ramping up the pressure on those who have not yet made a claim. The FCA has countered with its own advert. It's rubbish and in the wrong place.

One would think that, after the revelation that more than GBP1,000 million had been collected by form fillers providing entirely unnecessary services for those claiming PPI refunds, the market would have died. Maybe you'd have thought that the action against those pretending to be official websites would have discouraged others from doing something similar. And, of course, there's law that spamming individuals is a crime. Welcome to Magnetise Media Ltd which says it's registered by the Claims Management Regulator and listed by the Ministry of Justice. Hopefully Trading Standards and the Information Commissioner have files, too.

Yes, yes, we know. Commonwealth Bank's got its problems over a failure to properly design and implement an automatic system and for not acting on the reports it did produce. But that's not the only thing bad that's happening down at the bank that has more short-forms of its name than we can keep up with. CBA, Commonwealth, CB, CommBank... so much for the usual rule of construction that if it's called something different, it is something different.

You can't turn on the TV during the daytime in the UK without being bombarded with adverts for gambling or some kind of claims management service, the latter ranging from solicitors with names that sound like second hand furniture shops to unlicensed and unregulated companies that sound like firms of solicitors. This latter group has found rich - very rich - pickings in relation to the scandal where millions were "mis-sold" Personal Protection Insurance as part of a loans package. How rich? The government's increasingly excellent Public Accounts Committee says some GBP5,000 million has been spent by people who bought services they did not need.