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The door finally slammed shut on the PPI mis-selling scandal last month, after banks were flooded with millions of complaints.
RBS has said it expects to pay out an extra £900m on top of the £5.3bn it had already ring-fenced, thanks to the rush.
New City Agenda, a consumer think tank, said if this were replicated at other banks, Barclays and Lloyds could be saddled with extra bills of £1bn and £2bn.
The end of PPI does not sound the death knell for claims firms – or for customers seeking recompense for deals they were mis-sold. Here are three other areas where consumers could be in line for a refund.
Packaged bank accounts
Millions of customers may have been mis-sold packaged accounts, said Martyn James of Resolver, a complaints service. The accounts were his firm’s sixth most complained-about category last year and 270,000 complaints have been registered since 2015.
The accounts charge a monthly fee, typically between £10 and £25, in return for benefits such as travel insurance or breakdown cover.
Yet consumers frequently find the benefits are useless. Mr James said that, throughout the 2000s, bank staff were given high targets and pressured to sell as many packaged accounts as possible. This led to consumers being signed up to accounts they had little use for.
One Telegraph Money reader received around £800 back from her bank after she became frustrated with the benefits she received. She was sold a £13-a-month account with the promise of breakdown cover and preferential treatment on loans.
However, the car insurance did not cover driving in Europe, forcing her to buy a separate policy, and she was refused a bridging loan for a house purchase. She complained and was refunded the fees.
Gareth Shaw of Which?, the consumer group, said banks had an obligation to provide clear information to customers to help them make a decision. He added: “Banks have not always played by the rules and have had to set aside millions for compensation claims as a result.”
‘Gap’ insurance
Guaranteed asset protection (Gap) insurance is sold to car buyers to cover the difference between the price paid and the amount the driver would receive if the vehicle were written off.
Cars quickly shed value. A driver who paid £15,000 for a new car that was written off shortly afterwards might receive only £10,000 from the insurer. In theory, Gap insurance would pay the difference, but this is often far from the reality.
In one case, the Financial Ombudsman Service ordered a dealership to compensate a driver, “Hannah”, whose insurance paid out less than expected. The small print of the policy stated that it would use a “trade guide valuation” for the vehicle, but Hannah had paid more than this for the car.
The ombudsman ruled that the garage should have made clear that the insurance might pay less.
Estimates of how much consumers have overpaid for Gap insurance are as high as £121m a year.
The Financial Conduct Authority, the City watchdog, introduced a number of new measures in 2015. Research from the time found that 38pc of those who bought add-on insurance had not considered a need for it before the day of purchase – suggesting that it was sold to them by the salesman. With Gap insurance, this rose to 59pc.
Providers must now give customers two days to consider whether they need the insurance and publish claims data. Including cover on an “opt-out” basis is also banned.
Pensions
Complaints about pension advice are growing quickly. The ombudsman received 7,490 new complaints about pensions last year.
The 2015 pension freedoms, which allow access to pots from the age of 55, led to a swell of inquiries from those nearing retirement about whether to leave generous workplace schemes. These transfers often involve huge sums and are a gold mine for mis-selling.
The 2017 restructuring of the British Steel pension scheme led to the targeting of 124,000 people in what a parliamentary committee called a “major mis-selling scandal”. Members of the scheme had to decide what to do with their savings; many were targeted by “vulture” advisers.
Last year the scheme’s trustees said it had processed 2,600 transfers with a value of £1.1bn. One worker told the BBC he had lost more than £200,000.
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