Retailer behind Simply Be and JD Williams plans to make extra PPI provision

The fashion retailer behind brands 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 slumped as much as 10% as it said that, in line with the wider industry, it saw 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.

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 2019.

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.

Earlier this week, both Lloyds and Barclays announced their plans to put aside extra cash to deal with the PPI scandal, which saw many people routinely mis-sold the insurance alongside products such as store cards, credit cards, mortgages and other loans.

Barclays said it had received a significantly higher than expected volume of PPI-related claims, inquiries and information requests during August, with a further spike in the final days leading up to the complaints deadline.

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.