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The FCA said that HSBC – which also provides financial services for M&S Bank – did not consider customers’ circumstances when it came to missed payments between June 2017 and October 2018. <\/p>\n
Affordability assessments were not always made when people were trying to reduce or clear their arrears, meaning some customers ending up facing more money troubles.<\/p>\n
These assessments are supposed to make sure a person can afford to take on any extra payments.<\/p>\n
The watchdog also said HSBC sometimes “took disproportionate action when people fell behind with payments, which risked people getting into greater financial difficulty”.<\/p>\n
It said the bank’s policies and procedures didn’t go far enough to stop failings while there were deficiencies in the training of staff.<\/p>\n
\u201cPeople must be able to trust their lenders to treat them fairly when in financial difficulty,” said Therese Chambers, the FCA’s joint executive director of enforcement and market oversight.<\/p>\n
“By failing to do so, HSBC put 1.5 million people at risk of greater financial harm.”<\/p>\n
HSBC itself told the FCA about issues with handling customers facing financial difficulty in 2018.<\/p>\n
It said it had invested \u00a394m in trying to identify and resolve the problem and made redress payments totalling \u00a3185m to more than 1.5 million customers. <\/p>\n
The bank could have faced a steeper fine by the FCA of \u00a38.9m. But the watchdog said it took HSBC’s remediation and redress programme into account as well as an agreement to settle the case. <\/p>\n<\/div>\n