Ombudsman reveals financial companies we most complain about

The latest complaint figures from the Financial Ombudsman Service show banks and PPI still dominate its workload.

The Financial Ombudsman Service has published the latest complaint figures against financial firms, with banks continuing to dominate.

In total the Ombudsman, which acts as an arbiter when a complaint is not resolved to your satisfaction, took on a whopping 164,347 cases over the second half of 2015, a slight 6% decrease on the previous period.

These complaints are placed into one of six categories, depending on what they are related to: banking and credit, mortgages and home finance, payments protection insurance (PPI), general insurance (excluding PPI), investments, and life, pensions and decumulation.

PPI continues to dominate, accounting for 56% of all new complaints.

So which firms are letting the most customers down? We’ve taken a look at the 15 firms who attracted the most new cases to the FOS in the last six months of 2015.

15. Allianz Insurance

Allianz was the subject of 1,123 complaints to the FOS in the second half of last year. While the bulk of these were down to PPI (780), it also performed poorly on general insurance complaints, attracting 343.

14. UK Insurance Limited

This is part of the Direct Line Group, and dominated complaints about general insurance (excluding PPI). It attracted 1,290 complaints on this subject to the FOS, more than double the number of complaints any other firm received.

13. Canada Square Operations Limited

Canada Square Operations is what used to be known as Egg Banking, and is part of Citibank. PPI dominates its complaints – of the 2,486 complaints it attracted, 2,466 were about the controversial insurance.

12. Clydesdale Bank

Clydesdale Bank was the subject of 3,473 complaints. More than three quarters of those were about PPI.

11. Nationwide Building Society

The UK’s largest mutual attracted 3,881 complaints to the FOS. It performed poorly on mortgages and home finance, where it was the sixth most-complained-about firm (313 complaints).

10. Financial Insurance Company Limited

Financial Insurance Company Limited is not exactly a household name, trading as Genworth and Genworth Financial and offering a range of insurance products. It was the subject of 4,429 complaints to the Ombudsman, of which 4,424 were about PPI. That’s 99.9%!

9. Capital One

Credit card provider Capital One was the subject of 5,539 complaints. More than 96% of those complaints were related to PPI.

=7. Santander

Santander takes seventh spot on the list, attracting 5,628 complaints. The bank attracted the second highest number of complaints about mortgages and home finance (512).

=7. Royal Bank of Scotland

Royal Bank of Scotland shares seventh spot with Santander, having also amassed 5,628 complaints. These were mostly made up of banking and credit (2,562) and PPI (2,768) cases.

6. MBNA

Credit card provider MBNA takes sixth spot on the list, with 6,772 complaints. A whopping 6,479 of them – almost 96% – were related to PPI.

5. NatWest

NatWest attracted 9,330 complaints. More than 6,500 of these were related to banking and credit, the second highest of any firm.

It also attracted relatively high numbers of complaints regarding mortgages and home finance (241) and investments (127).

4. HSBC

The Ombudsman received 10,997 complaints related to HSBC, giving it fourth spot on the list. It was the subject of more than 7,000 complaints about PPI and 143 about investments, which were the fourth highest figures for each of those categories.

3. Barclays Bank

Barclays was the subject of 17,781 complaints. More than 7,500 were about banking and credit issues, more than any other company in the list.

It was also the subject of 420 complaints about mortgages and home finance, the third worst of all.

2. Lloyds Bank

A total of 21,304 complaints about Lloyds were passed onto the Ombudsman in the second half of last year. Around three-quarters of those complaints were related to PPI, though Lloyds also attracted more complaints regarding investments than anyone else.

1. Bank of Scotland

The FOS took on more cases related to Bank of Scotland than any other financial firm, at 22,089 cases. 638 cases related to mortgages and home finance, far more than any other company, while it was also the worst performer on PPI with a massive 17,449 cases.

If you have a complaint about about a financial firm, find out more about the Ombudsman and what it can do for you at the Financial Ombudsman Service website.

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