The UK division of the Spanish banking group, Santander, has seen a 40 per cent year-on-year drop in profits with the payment protection insurance mis selling scandal cited as one of the primary contributing factors.

The high street bank, who has had to earmark £538m, announced after-tax profits of £993m, an annual loss of approximately £660m. This had a significant impact on the overall banking group’s net profit, a 34 per cent loss year-on-year, down to £4.5bn.

Yet in comparison to other PPI culprits, Santander looks positively angelic.

Lloyds banking group, which is 40 per cent owned by the taxpayer, were seemingly the most prolific in the payment protection insurance mis selling scandal, having set aside £3.2bn in cover the cost of PPI compensation claims; a figure which actually equates to the bank’s entire 2010 pre-tax profit.

The scale of the payment protection insurance scandal is huge with the total bill set to cost lenders in the region of £9bn.

Payment protection insurance was sold to millions of customers who took out a loan or credit card. Many who were left paying for a policy could not use it, did not want it, or didn’t even know about it.

PPI Return has been helping victims of PPI mis selling for the last three years and has recovered over £20m in compensation for them^. To find out if we could have you make a claim for mis sold payment protection insurance, complete our free, no obligation claim form and one of our specialist advisers will be in touch to discuss your claim.

^GW Data