Mis-selling Derivatives Victims Eye Mass Bank Lawsuits Post FCA Review

Small to medium enterprises that believe they have been mis-sold complex interest rate swap agreements (IRSA), but were excluded from the regulator's scheme, are looking to band together to take Britain's biggest banks to court.

Speaking exclusively to IBTimes TV, the chairman of independent lobby group Bully-Banks, Jeremy Roe said many businesses have either felt let down by the Financial Conduct Authority's (FCA) review or have been excluded from the outset and are therefore weighing up the option to join forces to sue the banks for compensation.

"There were nearly 30,000 of these products sold to SMEs, 35% of those were excluded from that scheme in the first place," said Roe.

"We have 20% of those businesses, who were included in that scheme, now having wholly unsatisfactory redress offers. Our view is simple, all those businesses should come together and we're going to organise and orchestrate the resolution of this issue, ultimately in the courts.

"It's about getting businesses to work together to get to the second stage in our campaign, which is to after experiencing an ultimately unsatisfactory scheme."

"What we are saying is that we need to collaborate and coordinate and the data we have will help all of those excluded from the scheme."

The FCA responded to the interview with a statement toIBTimes UK:

"It is hugely disappointing that thousands of small businesses were mis-sold these products and left out of pocket. That is why we have acted to get firms the fair redress they're due.

"This is a huge compensation scheme that has seen 30,000 cases reviewed, which to date has returned almost £800m to over 5,700 small businesses, and thousands more have offers of compensation in the post.

"We designed this compensation scheme to be as quick as possible, as simple to understand as we could make it and, above all, fair. That means ensuring that those smaller businesses that were unlikely to have the specific expertise to understand the risks are put them back in the position they would have been in had they not been mis-sold these products.

"To ensure it was fair, we put in place independent reviewers to check the banks' work, look over complaints and agree that decisions on redress were equitable. And, when we were concerned about the pace of the review, we made changes with the banks that resulted in a speeding up of payments of initial redress."

Barclays, which is also cited in the video interview said in a statement toIBTimes UK:

"It is in Barclays' interests as well as our customers to complete this complex review as fast as possible and our 600 dedicated staff are working hard to achieve this. Where we have made mistakes, we will put them right."