Today, the British Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) published its recent data of consumer complaints on financial services. Since June 2016, UK financial institutions have been required to report data to the FCA under the new rules. This increased the total number of reported complaints by about 9 percent to 3.32 million for the first half of 2017.
These are some important insights:
- The share of complaints regarding the topics 'advising, selling and arranging' decreased from 59 percent in the first half of 2016 to 43 percent in 2017.
- 'General administration and customer service' accounted for 38 percent of all complaints – this is a steep rise compared to 27 percent in the previous year.
- Again, payment protection insurance (PPI) continues to be the product most complained about, accounting for a third of all complaints. The total volume of PPI complaints increased by 24 percent from 899,000 to 1.11 mio compared to 2016. The redress payments for PPI complaints amounted to 82 percent of the total redress paid to consumers of £1.99 billion.
Christopher Woolard, Executive Director of Strategy and Competition, commented on this: "We now require firms to report all complaints which gives us a fuller picture of where the industry might not be meeting customer needs. But even allowing for the change in reporting rules, and some progress made, the numbers are still significant. Firms need to do all they can to reduce complaints and ensure that they are working in the best interests of consumers."
Source: FCA
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