By Daniel Lanyon on Monday 29 October 2018
It is the fourth successive half year of growth in the the number of complaints regarding regulated financial services firms and the rise isn't just down to PPI.
Complaints regarding regulated financial services companies in the UK swelled to more than 4.13m incidents during the first half of 2018, a growth rate of 10 per cent compared with the previous six-month period.
Payments Protection Insurance (PPI) continued to be the most complained about product, accounting for 42 per cent of all complaints. The next most complained about products are current accounts (15 per cent), credit cards (8 per cent) and motor and transport insurance (6 per cent).
Stripping out PPI claims, the perennial largest type of complaint, the UK financial regulator the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) recorded a huge uptick in complaints regarding digital disruption to retail banking. Excluding PPI, complaints increased by 9 per cent (193,360) from the previous 6-month period for retail banking products.
The FCA said in a release that this was largely due to high-profile cases of disruption to retail banking services in the first half of the year including complaints regarding TSB made by banking and credit card customers following its move to a new IT platform on 22 April 2018 that resulted in chaos for many customers.
Christopher Woolard, executive director of strategy and competition says that firms need to be doing all that they can to reduce complaints.
“It is clear that firms need to look at the cause of the rise in complaints and address these issues to prevent further increases. It should be a priority for firms to ensure good consumer outcomes are achieved and they should be making sure that they are taking the right steps to treat customers fairly.”
'We are encouraged to see that figures are showing that more consumers are making a decision on whether to complain about PPI.”
