Complaints about mis-sold PPI top 500,000

The payment protection insurance mis-selling scandal reached a disturbing landmark this week: the Financial Ombudsman received its 500,000 complaint.

It arrived on Tuesday, and was brought by a consumer from Wolverhampton who was self-employed when she was sold the PPI policy by her bank. Self-employed people are not covered by such policies, so her complaint is almost guaranteed to be successful.

But it's the level of complaints that is disturbing. The Ombudsman said it is receiving up to 400 PPI complaints every hour. Meanwhile complaint volumes so far this financial year – from 6 April – are already higher than 140,000. By comparison there were 157,716 PPI complaints brought in the whole of the previous financial year.

"It's extraordinary that we've received our 500,000th complaint about PPI – and despite these record numbers, this mis-selling scandal shows no sign of slowing," said the Chief Financial Ombudsman, Natalie Ceeney.

"While it's good news that more people know that they can come to the Ombudsman, it's clear that unless the banks sort out their complaints quickly and fairly, people will only face increasingly longer waits for justice."

Payment protection insurance is now the most complained about financial product of all time, with more than 500,000 complaints to date. The second most complained about product is mortgage endowments, with 350,000 complaints so far.