Consumer complaints to the Financial Ombudsman Service (FOS) rose by 18 per cent in the last half of 2009, the latest data from the service shows.
During the period July 1 to December 31 2009 the service received 82,136 new complaints compared to 69,841 for the first half of 2009.
Of those grievances about individual financial businesses, including banks, insurance companies and investment firms, 88 per cent focused on just 155 companies out of a possible 100,000 businesses covered by the FOS.
However, High Street banks continued to dominate the complaints tables.
Five banking groups received more than 3,000 complaints each:
Lloyds Banking Group,
Barclays,
RBS, Abbey and
HSBC. These groups alone accounted for almost 47,000 cases - over half of all new complaints received by the ombudsman in the last six months of 2009.
Lloyds and Barclays were the most criticised financial groups in the first half of 2009. All the complaints against Lloyds Banking Group and its subsidiaries added up to 20,190, a quarter of the total.
The Lloyds group received almost double the number of complaints as Barclays bank, which came second on the list. The ombudsman received 10,892 about the Barclays group in total, including 9,836 complaints from customers of Barclays bank.
The ombudsman received 5,476 complaints about government-backed Royal Bank of Scotland's RBS and NatWest brands, which came third.
Santander, which includes the former Abbey and Bradford & Bingley brands and Alliance & Leicester, was fourth most complained about bank - by 5,073 people - followed by HSBC in fifth place with 3,048 complaints against its name.
People were most likely to complain to the ombudsman about banking and credit products, while many banks also received a high level of complaints about general insurance products, including controversial payment protection insurance - the most complained about individual product.
There were also high levels of complaints against credit card companies, with 1,918 against MBNA, 1,609 against Capital One and 1,060 against Egg
Of all the cases, the ombudsman upheld an average of 53 per cent in favour of consumers, compared to 59 per cent earlier in the year.
However, there was a wide variation in the proportion of complaints upheld. In the worst cases 100 per cent were upheld against Ocean Finance & Mortgages and Eisis, which sells insurance.
Wills & Co Stockbrokers – recently censured by the FSA for poor sales practices and in the process of being wound up - had 98 per cent upheld and Welcome Financial Services 92 per cent.
At the other end of the scale only 10 per cent of complaints against Chelsea Building Society were upheld and the ombudsman found against Liverpool Victoria in 11 per cent of cases.
“The data we have released 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,” said David Thomas, interim chief 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.”
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