Yahoo Finance Barclays facing £1.6bn High Court lawsuit
Barclays is being sued for £1.6bn in damages by a US credit card services firm which filed a High Court claim against the British bank for mis-selling a payment protection product at subprime credit card business Monument.
CCUK Finance, which used to be known as CompuCredit, bought Monument and its portfolio from Barclays ten years ago. The £390m deal included an indemnity clause relating to customers' claims over mis-sold payment protection policies.
Barclays has since paid out some compensation to former Monument customers.
However, CCUK alleges Monument's credit card agreements were "worthless", and is now claiming £1bn in damages from Barclays, which includes interest, together with £60m for Barclays' alleged fraudulent misrepresentation.
In a statement issued on Tuesday evening, Barclays said: "Over the last 10 years we have operated within the parameters of the deal agreed with CompuCredit and believe their recent claims against us are baseless and without merit. We will be vigorously defending our position."
Since January 2011 an estimated 7.5 million people have been paid a total of £23 billion in PPI compensation, the Financial Conduct Authority found in March.
In the last six months of 2016 alone, 160,650 complaints were made about Barclays' insurance policies, most commonly payment protection insurance.
Members of the public must claim compensation they may be owed from banks before the FCA's final deadline in August 2019.
