Financial processing group HML is planning to boost its head office operations by transferring around 160 staff to its Skipton base.

The transfer will be of staff who have survived a cost cutting cull which involves closing the group’s Padiham office in September. A further 113 workers will be made redundant.

HML, the financial outsourcing subsidiary of Skipton Building Society, currently employs 698 staff at its head office in Gargrave Road, Skipton.

Neil Warman, chief commercial and finance officer, said: “The announcement is part of our strategy to realise planned cost savings from our multi-million pound investment in IT over the last three years and ensure the business is in the right shape to take advantage of new market opportunities.”

In 2010 the company closed its Scarborough office with the loss of 136 jobs and also axed a further 80 posts in Skipton, Padiham, Glasgow and Derry in Northern Ireland.

As part of a drive to broaden its operations, HML has set up an operation to help banks cope with an expected deluge of claims from people who were believe they mis-sold Personal Protection Insurance.

It has launched a specialist complaints handling service to help companies deal with a backlog of complaints following the banking industry’s cave-in over the mis-selling of policies.

Neil Warman said: “It’s become clear the scale of the PPI redress exercise is much larger than had been estimated. Lloyds has put aside £3.2bn, Barclays £1bn and RBS £850m.

“Around 16.1m PPI policies have been sold since 2005 and all those with a policy have to be contacted and their case reviewed to see if they are due compensation.”

The FSA says 1.5m policyholders have complained about mis-selling, two million non-complainants will be paid compensation as a result of ‘systemic failures’ and 750,000 future complaints are expected.

  • Read the full story in Wednesday's T&A