Barclays Bank Plc

In December 2020 the FCA fined Barclays Bank UK, Barclays Bank and Clydesdale Financial Services a combined £26,056,400 for the poor treatment of consumer credit customers who fell behind on repayments or got into financial difficulty between April 2014 and December 2018. Barclays failed to have proper conversations with struggling customers to understand why they were in arrears, did not properly assess their circumstances, and as a result offered repayment plans that were unaffordable or unsustainable — breaching the FCA's rules requiring firms to treat customers fairly and to organise their affairs responsibly. Barclays had already identified around 1.5 million affected customer accounts and paid them more than £273 million in redress. It did not dispute the findings and settled for a 30% discount, without which the fine would have been £37,223,500.