Lloyds insurance mis-selling bill rises

Britain’s biggest high-street bank Lloyds says it has set aside the equivalent of another 1.75 billion euros to compensate customers who were wrongly sold loan insurance. It is the fifth time the part-nationalised lender has increased its provision. It now expects to pay out a total of 7.9 billion euros to customers – more than any other British bank. The payment protection insurance (PPI) policies were meant to protect customers in the event of sickness or redundancy, but were often sold to borrowers who did not want or need them. The increased PPI bill cast a cloud over full-year results which were better than expected. Lloyds made a better-than-expected underlying pretax profit of 2.6 billion pounds (three billion euros) in 2012.