UK Financial Ombudsman receives 92,903 new complaints in Q3 2018/2019
PPI continued to be the most complained-about financial product, with 40,855 new complaints.
The UK Financial Ombudsman Service (FOS) has earlier today published its statistics for the third quarter of 2018/2019. The data covers the three-month period to December 31, 2018.
In the third quarter of 2018/2019, the Financial Ombudsman received 161,195 enquiries and 92,903 new complaints – with 9,324 complaints passed to an ombudsman for a final decision. On average, the FOS upheld 33% of the complaints it resolved.
Payment protection insurance (PPI) continued to be the most complained-about financial product, with 40,855 new complaints. PPI complaints made up nearly 44% of all complaints FOS received.
The number of complaints about payday loans has almost halved since last quarter, dropping from 14,578 to 7,728. But, for the year to date, the Ombudsman has received almost twice as many complaints about payday loans as it did in the whole of 2017/2018.
There were 60 spread betting enquiries received in the three-month period to end-December 2018, up from the preceding quarter, with 16% of cases upheld. The number of derivatives enquiries was 29, with 25% of the cases upheld.
Let’s recall that, in the quarter to end-September 2018, the FOS received around 1,000 more enquiries and 800 more complaints about current accounts than in the previous quarter. The uphold rate for these complaints also increased from 34% to 60%. This rise was primarily due to recent problems with banking IT systems, the FOS explained.
The FOS has published a Consumer Factsheet dedicated to the IT issues that have affected the operations of several banks, including RBS, TSB, NatWest, and Barclays. The publication of the Factsheet is in response to the growing volume of enquiries that the FOS has to deal with related to the latest computer troubles at the financial institutions.
The FOS explains that the first steps that the customers have to take include getting in touch with the bank and letting the bank know what happened to them because of the computer problems; what the customers want the bank to do to help put things right for them; and what losses the customers want the bank to cover.
If the customers are unhappy with how their bank deals with their problems, they can contact the FOS. The Service can usually get involved 15 days after a customer has raised concerns with the bank – and sometimes even sooner.
