Lloyds Bank has today been fined £117 million by the Financial Conduct Authority (its regulator) for failing to deal fairly with PPI complains in the period March 2012 to May 2013.

This comes as no surprise to me at all. It was obvious during that period that something had changed in Lloyds, when the bank suddenly started rejecting cases out of hand, with a standard letter that was the same in every instance. It was crystal clear the bank had taken a decision to “blanket” reject cases rather than investigate them.

I recall discussing this with some case handlers I know inside the bank at the time. We all said the same then. It will lead to trouble and a fine in the end. All the cases will need to be reopened and it will cost the bank more in the long run. And so it has proved. It is amazing how many times senior executives make this mistake with their complaint handling; thinking they can get away with treating people unfairly. We saw it during the endowment review scandal, and now we see it again with PPI.

Is the fine big enough? Probably not. But what needs to happen to stop this in the future is the FCA must be given the power to name and shame those that made the decision and ban them from working in that area of banking again.