LONDON (Reuters) -French insurer AXA won a London court ruling on Friday worth nearly 675 million pounds ($908 million) against Santander over the mis-selling of payment protection insurance more than two decades ago.
The dispute between AXA and Santander centred on PPI policies sold before 2005 by GE Capital Bank, formerly part of General Electric Co’s GE Capital and which was acquired by Santander in 2009.
AXA sued at London’s High Court in 2021 over losses related to over 650,000 individual customer complaints about PPI policies, one of Britain’s costliest retail financial scandals, with banks paying out around 40 billion pounds in compensation.
The insurer, which inherited liabilities for the policies in its 2015 acquisition of two Genworth units, paid out almost 500 million pounds in redress to consumers and over 70 million pounds relating to complaints, Judge Julia Dias said in Friday’s judgment.
Dias ruled that AXA “has a valid claim for an indemnity” against Santander Insurance Services UK Limited in relation to redress payments and ombudsman fees.
AXA’s lawyers at Quinn Emanuel said the ruling was worth around 675 million pounds, though an AXA spokesperson said it will “only be entitled to a minority of the final amount awarded by the court as Genworth has already reimbursed AXA for a substantial portion of the mis-selling losses”.
Genworth Financial said in a statement that it expected to receive approximately $750 million, depending on the applicable exchange rate.
A Santander spokesperson said in a statement: “We disagree with the outcome and are seeking to appeal.
“We do not expect the net impact of the judgment to be material for Santander given provisions already made and the potential legal actions available.
“No customers have suffered loss as a consequence of the claim brought by AXA France or the judgment, nor does it impact upon past redress paid to customers for PPI complaints.”
(Reporting by Sam Tobin; Editing by Emelia Sithole-Matarise)
