Tweet
Banks identified over complaints
The top five High Street banks account for more than half the complaints dealt with by the Financial Ombudsman Service.
More...
More...
Loading...
-
Re: Banks identified over complaints
Banks identified over complaints
Walter Merricks called for improved complaints handling by financial firms
The top five High Street banks accounted for more than half the complaints dealt with this year by the Financial Ombudsman Service (FOS).
The FOS deals with complaints from customers in the financial services industry if firms are unable to settle them themselves.
The FOS upheld an average of 59% of all complaints in the first half of 2009.
The UK's largest five banking firms are Lloyds Banking Group, Barclays, Royal Bank of Scotland, Abbey and HSBC.
It said it was publicising the names of individual firms to force them to resolve more complaints themselves.
"We have already been providing comparative complaints data on a private basis to the larger financial businesses - but this has led to no improvement in the standard of complaints handling by the worse-performing businesses," said Walter Merricks, the outgoing chief ombudsman.
"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 complaints to the ombudsman that should already have been resolved," he added.
Millions of complaints
In the first half of this year the FOS received almost 70,000 complaints, nearly 90% of which had been generated by customers of just 142 businesses out of the 100,000 the FOS covers.
Each of the five High Street banks had more than 3,000 complaints against them, with Barclays accounting for the most with 8,283.
Earlier this year the FOS accused many firms of being deliberately unhelpful to people who complained about poor service, to fob them off rather than deal with their complaints properly.
Two weeks ago the Financial Services Authority (FSA) revealed the huge scale of complaints that have built up in the financial services industry.
More than nine million individual complaints were made to financial firms in the 2006-2008 period, and more than half of them were about banking and loans.
The rising numbers have been driven by a huge increase in complaints about bank overdraft charges, and about the mis-selling of payment protection insurance and mortgage endowments.
During the second half of 2008, 40% of complaints were being settled by firms in their customers' favour, the FSA found.
From MSE
Worst banks for complaint rejections named and shamed - MoneySavingExpert News
-
Comment