A new report from the Financial Ombudsman Service (FOS) reveals that complaints about banks and other financial institutions increased by 15 per cent in the last six months of 2010, compared to the first half of the year.
The FOS regularly publishes data on the complaints they receive from consumers, which haven’t been resolved to the customer’s satisfaction directly by financial firms.
The highest numbers of complaints received were about Lloyds Banking Group – currently Britain’s largest bank, which was formed from the merger of Lloyds TSB and HBOS.
The ombudsman received a total of 97,237 new complaints in the six-month period, and upheld 53 per cent of complaints in the customer’s favour – an increase from the first half of 2010.
Current Chief Ombudsman David Thomas said: “While the number of cases referred by consumers to the ombudsman has continued to increase substantially, it’s encouraging to see that some businesses are committed to handling complaints better.
“However, there is evidently still room for significant improvement in the way other financial businesses handle complaints – judged by the proportion of cases where we overturn the decision that the businesses have themselves come to in their own earlier investigation of their customer complaints.”
He added: “The data we have released today clearly shows that some businesses still need to do more to ensure that they deal with their customers’ complaints effectively and fairly – so that consumers do not then need to escalate their dissatisfaction to the ombudsman. We hope that businesses will continue to use this data to focus their attention on addressing these key complaints-handling issues over the coming months and years.”
