Banks 'named and shamed' over complaints
Tuesday, 15 September 2009 09:05
Today the names of the most complained about UK banks were released for the first time.
The Financial Ombudsman Service (FOS) - which deals with complaints against banks, insurance companies and other financial firms - has released the names of firms for the first time.
Barclays was the most complained about institution - with 8,283 cases received at the FOS in the first half of the year.
Cases head to the FOS usually after customers have complained internally. The Ombudsman also warned the number of cases, besides reflecting the quality of services, will also reflect the size of the firm.
Lloyds TSB saw 6,947 complaints, Bank of Scotland accounted for 5,804 cases and Abbey received 2,493.
Banks accounted for the top ten of most cases.
The full top ten:
- Barclays - 8283 cases received
- Lloyds TSB - 6947 cases received
- Bank of Scotland - 5,804 cases received
- Abbey - 2,493 cases received
- NatWest - 2,379 cases received
- MBNA Europe - 2,298 cases received
- HSBC - 2,177 cases received
- Royal Bank of Scotland - 1,812 cases received
- Alliance & Leicester - 1,744 cases received
- Capital One - 1,744 cases received
The FOS data also shows how many complaints were upheld - with the ombudsman finding in favour of the consumers after a firm has dismissed their complaint.
A total of 59 per cent of complaints were in favour of the consumer.
However, the rate varied substantially from 11 per cent to 95 per cent - suggesting some companies are failing to deal with complaints correctly internally.
Lloyds Banking's Black Horse, Loans.co.uk, Lloyds TSB Insurance and Capital One all saw more than 90 per cent of complaints resolved in favour of the consumer.
The FOS complaints charts are available here.
The FOS upheld 61 per cent of banking-related complaints, 41 per cent of mortgage complaints, 70 per cent of general insurance complaints and 42 per cent of investment-related complaints.
Peter Vicary-Smith, Which? chief executive, said: "Naming and shaming these companies is a victory for consumers but humiliating for the industry, who have had five years to get their houses in order.
"We'd now like to see the financial sector going further and publishing more data, particularly on brand names and product types."
He added: "Over half of the complaints to FOS are upheld in favour of the consumer; they should have been dealt with by providers' internal procedures before reaching that point."
The banks have moved to defend themselves - with the British Bankers Association (BBA) pointing out they only receive higher levels of complaints because they sell more products and have more customers.
The BBA claims Barclays only sees 6.6 complaints upheld by the FOS for every 100,000 products sold, while Lloyds Banking sees 6.8 complaints per 100,00 products.
BBA executive director, Eric Leenders said it was inevitable that thing would go wrong when millions of transactions go through each day.
"No one wants to receive complaints but banks will always move speedily to solve any problems their customers have," he said.
"These numbers published by the ombudsman show that most customers have no problems with their bank ."
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