FOS complaints soar as consumers fight the banks

By Elliot Wright, 25th February 2010

The number of complaints made to the Financial Ombudsman Service from consumers about financial firms rose by 18% in the last six months of 2009.

The FOS received a total of 82,136 new complaints during the period, up from 69,841 in the first half to the year.

Well over half of the complaints were related to the big five banks - Barclays, Santander, Lloyds, RBS and HSBC - as more and more aggrieved consumers decided to fight back on such issues as bank charges, mis sold PPI, mortgage arrears and insurance disputes.

The option to take a financial complaint to the FOS becomes available only once the firm in question has exhausted their own complaints process.

The FOS said that the increasing amount of cases referred onto them was encouraging evidence that firms were at least dealing with more complaints in line with regulations.

Interim chief ombudsman Dave Thomas said: "While the number of cases referred by consumers to the ombudsman has continued to increase substantially, it's encouraging to see that some businesses are committed to handling complaints better."

"However, there is evidently still room for significant improvement in the way other financial businesses handle complaints - judged by the proportion of cases where we overturn the decision that the businesses have themselves come to in their own earlier investigation of their customer complaints.

"The data we have released today clearly shows that some businesses still need to do more to ensure that they deal with their customers' complaints effectively and fairly - so that consumers do not then need to escalate their dissatisfaction to the ombudsman. We hope that businesses will continue to use this data to focus their attention on addressing these key complaints-handling issues over the coming months and years."

Useful links:

How to make a good complaint

Reclaim unfair mortgage arrears charges

Claims Financial