Lloyds bank, one of the biggest banks in the UK, has been recently fined £64 million ($81.2 million) for the unfair treatment of its mortgage customers in financial difficulties. It may sound strange for millions of other people with mortgages all over the world. However, in the UK everyone is equal before the law, even major financial institutions. Thus, the bank was fined by the Financial Conduct Authority for failures in handling hundreds of thousands of its customers who were struggling to make their mortgage payments. Lloyds and its Bank of Scotland and The Mortgage Business units are set to pay around £300 million in redress to 526,000 customers. Mark Steward, the FCA’s executive director of enforcement and market oversight noted that “by not sufficiently understanding their customers’ circumstances the banks risked treating unfairly more than a quarter of a million customers in mortgage arrears, over several years.” In the period between April 2011 and December 2015, the bank failed to support customers who were going through difficult times due to divorce, the death of a spouse, loss of a job, and in one case, when a family member had gone missing.
