// N Brown Group expects to put aside up to £30 million extra to deal with PPI claims
// It saw related inquiries surge tenfold in the run-up to the August 29 deadline
The parent company of fashion retailers Jacamo, Simply Be and JD Williams expects to put aside up to £30 million extra to deal with PPI claims, after seeing related inquiries surge tenfold in the run-up to the deadline.
Shares in N Brown Group slumped, in line with the wider industry, after a significant increase in PPI information requests and complaints in the final days leading up to, and including, the August 29 cut-off.
It follows similar announcements made by major banks earlier this week following a last-minute surge in complaints as people rushed to beat the deadline.
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N Brown has already paid out £108 million in financial redress to date and is working through all the complaints and requests now received.
It said that while it is not possible to be precise about the final outcome, it believes it will be necessary to make an additional provision in the range of £20 million to £30 million in its half-year results for the six months to August 31 this year.
N Brown said that in August it received more than 10 times the average volume of requests and complaints seen in the months prior to this, with around 110,000 in the month and more than 40,000 in the final week before the deadline.
On October 10 it will provide an update, including the size of provision, in its half-year results for the six months which ended August 31.
The PPI scandal pertains to many people being routinely mis-sold the insurance alongside products such as store cards, credit cards, mortgages and other loans.
The Financial Ombudsman Service received more than 2,800 PPI complaints a week typically in the first half of this year.
Around 64 million PPI policies were sold in total, many in the 1990s and early 2000s.
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