My gift to the FCA and HSBC

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In their press release of 20 January, below, the FCA announced that HSBC had “voluntarily” agreed to pay redress of “approximately” £4m to “approximately” 6,700 people. I have evidence which shows that the true figure should be £80-100m. I believe I know how the figure of £4m was arrived at.

At the end of last year I had a telephone conference with the Solicitors Regulation Authority, who are re-investigating the matter. They told me that the solicitors involved, Weightmans and Restons, had reversed the illegal “collection charge” on all live accounts in 2010, at the time of the Office of Fair Trading order against the bank telling them to stop adding the charges. Following the conversation it occurred to me that if that was the case (and I have evidence to show that it is unlikely they did so) then there will have been thousands of cases where consumers were put into credit. I therefore sent this email to the FCA and the SRA on 3 January 2017.

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Miraculously, after 4 years of waiting, it was announced on 20 January 2017 that the sum of £4m will be repaid. I believe this to be the sum of consumers put into credit after the alleged reversal of the charge. However, it does not take into account the hundreds of thousands that will have paid the charge in full prior to September 2010, which as stated, I estimate to equal £80-100m.

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