British insurance companies are paying £200 million ($270 mill
ion) to compensate motorists whose claims were underpaid, the Financial Conduct Authority said on Friday.
Insurers including Direct Line Insurance Group Plc and Admiral Group Plc are getting in touch with about 270,000 affe
cted customers, according to the watchdog. About
£129 million has already been paid out.
The regulator started a review of practices around car insurance claims last year, finding that some providers were mak
ing automatic deductions for assumed pre-existing damage to vehicles. This particularly disadvantaged careful drivers, according to the FCA.
“We’ll step in when consumers aren’t getting fair value — and we are pleased to see that the practices which led to
some unfair payouts have already changed,” Sarah Pritchard, deputy chief executive officer of the FCA, said in a statement.
These measures are separate from a probe into the motor finance industry that reached the UK’s Supreme Court earlier
this year. The FCA is working on the redress program for those customers who were charged secret commission on car loans.
“Plaintiffs would all be seeking relief based on different theories of recovery, based on different positions, at differ
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ent newspapers, in different areas of the country, with different decisionmakers,” the Alexandria, Virginia-based judge wrote.
Alston, an appointee of President Donald Trump, also said the proposed class would include “large swaths” of employees including human resources, info
rmation technology and perhaps janitorial staff who suffered no adverse employment actions.
Five former Gannett journalists said they were fired, pushed to resign or passed over for promotions, under
a 2020 policy under which Gannett committed to have its newsrooms reflect the racial and ethnic demographics of communities they cover by 2025.
The New York-based company has said its Inclusion Report, which the plaintiffs cited as evidence of alleg
ed racial basis, did not establish quotas or require specific mechanisms to achieve its “aspirational goals” regarding workplace diversity.
Alston dismissed four of the plaintiffs from the case.
He let the plaintiff Logan Barry, a former reporter for the Progress-Index
in Petersburg, Virginia, sue for allegedly being denied a chance to seek a promotion ultimately awarded to a less qualified Black woman.