The extensive half-yearly complaints data has recently been released for H1 2024 by the Financial Ombudsman Service (FOS).
They publish data every six months showing the number and outcome of the complaints they “handle about financial businesses.”
This half-yearly data from the Financial Ombudsman Service (FOS) shows the number of complaints against financial businesses for which there were “both 30 new and 30 resolved complaints in the relevant period.”
The data in this latest update from the Financial Ombudsman Service (FOS) reportedly covers the time-period from January to June 2024.
Overall, they received a total of 133,019 complaints between the time-frame of 1 January, 2024 and 30 June 2024.
According to the report from the Financial Ombudsman Service (FOS), this is said to represent a significant increase of more than 40% on the same period in 2023, when we received 93,114 complaints.
The report also mentioned that 242 businesses feature in their complaints data for the first half of 2024, this is now reportedly “up on the first half of 2023 – when 220 businesses featured.”
In the first six months of this year, they claim to have “upheld 35% of complaints we resolved in favor of the consumer, compared to 37% in the first half of 2023.”
Key Insights from the first six months of the year:
- Banking and consumer credit complaints continue to be the most complained about sectors, which has seen an increase year on year.
- Disputes about credit cards and ‘unaffordable” lending, car finance as well as fraud and scams were the main driver for the rise in banking and credit complaints.
Notably, the Financial Ombudsman Service (FOS) claims to have received 101,031 banking and credit complaints in the first six months of 2024.
More than half or the majority of these complaints were reportedly “brought by professional representatives.”
In the same period the previous year, they claim to have “received 59,690 complaints and just a quarter of cases were referred to them by professional representatives.”
Their latest data also shows which firms received the “most complaints” across sectors such as banking, insurance services, investment and credit.
As clarified in the update, the uphold rates vary per firm, with some “having more cases found in favour of consumers.”
