Banks dominate FOS complaints name and shame list

Banks dominated new FOS complaints figures naming and shaming the worst offenders for the first time.

Seven banks each had more than 2,000 new complaints in the first six months of 2009, accounting for almost half of all complaints received by the FOS.

Lloyds and its subsidiaries accounted for more than 15,233 complaints, more than a fifth of the total received by the FOS.

National IFA Sesame received 144 complaints while Phoenix Life received 508 and Windsor Life 164. Elsewhere, Santander Asset Management and St James's Place Wealth Management are both listed.

Providers Aviva, Axa, Friends Provident, Legal & General, Liverpool Victoria, Scottish Widows and Zurich are also included.

The Financial Ombudsman Service is making available for the first time a range of complaints data relating to individually-named financial businesses - including insurance companies and investment firms.

Figures cover those financial businesses where the FOS received at least 30 new cases and resolved at least 30 cases between 1 January 2009 and 30 June 2009.

Barclays and Lloyds TSB Bank each received more than 6,000 new complaints in the first six months of the year, with Barclays receiving almost 8,300.

Bank of Scotland, part of Lloyds, received more than 5,800, while Abbey National, HSBC, MBNA Europe and NatWest, part of the RBS group, each received more than 2,000. The Royal Bank of Scotland received more than 1,812.

The vast majority of complaints relate to banking and credit or general insurance. A number of complaints also relate to mortgages and home finance, while the FOS also lists complaints on investments, life and pensions and decumulation.

The data published today covers consumer complaints handled by the FOS between 1 January and 30 June 2009.

During this six-month period, it received a total of 69,841 new complaints - of which 87% related to 142 financial businesses, out of more than 100,000 businesses covered by the ombudsman.

The FOS says the number of new complaints against each business is likely to be affected by its size, but adds experts it consulted were unable to agree how size, or market share, should be taken into account.

Almost 60% of complaints were upheld by the FOS. Across the 142 individual businesses included in the complaints data, the uphold rate varied substantially between 11% and 95%.

It upheld 61% of banking-related complaints, 41% of mortgage complaints, 70% of general-insurance complaints and 42% of investment-related complaints.

FOS chairman Sir Christopher Kelly says: "I will be writing to the chairmen of the financial businesses that generate the largest proportion of our complaints workload, to ask them to consider very carefully both their own complaints performance - as reflected in the data we are publishing today - and the complaints performance of their competitors."

Walter Merricks, who is stepping down as chief ombudsman next month after 10 years in the role, adds: "I believe that putting this information into the open will now give those worse-performing businesses vital encouragement to improve - which should mean fewer of their customers having to bring unresolved complaints to the ombudsman."

For the full FOS data, click here.