Professor Philip Lane:

This goes back to the discussion about pre-2013 and post-2013. Even post-2013 the redress is all we can manage. This comes back to the fact that it is such a system-wide large-scale situation. One might say the natural way to work out compensation is through the Financial Services Ombudsman and the courts. We are trying to accelerate this by saying that we know compensation would normally only be through the ombudsman process or court process. We are asking the banks not to require people to go through that. We are asking them to make reasonable offers now to avoid thousands of people having to seek compensation through the normal mechanisms. In normal times for normal disputes between banks and customers the ombudsman framework is in place. However, in this scenario we are making a call to avoid or minimise that by the banks awarding voluntary compensation.