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BoS and Santander top mortgage complaints to FOS
The Bank of Scotland and Santander UK received the most complaints of any lender about mortgages and home finance in the first six months of the year, as complaint figures were dominated by payment protection insurance (PPI).
The Financial Ombudsman Service’s (FOS) latest complaints data for the six months to 30 June 2011 revealed that Lloyds Banking Group brands, including the Bank of Scotland, collectively topped the mortgage complaints figures.
Three of its brands – Bank of Scotland, Cheltenham and Gloucester (C&G) and Lloyds TSB – accounted for 837 complaints.
Bank of Scotland received the most mortgage complaints of all financial firms at 590, with 47% resolved in consumers’ favour. However, this paled in comparison to the bank’s total of 13,021 complaints, of which 9,945 related to PPI.
Santander UK came second with 460 mortgage complaints, with 31% upheld, while Barclays came third with 362 mortgage complaints, of which 45% were resolved in favour of the consumer.
C&G and Clydesdale Bank came joint fourth, each with 201 mortgage complaints. However, while just 28% of C&G complaints were found in favour of the consumer, Clydesdale had 89% of the complaints upheld against it.
On average, 38% of mortgage and home finance complaints were upheld.
Meanwhile, Nationwide (158), NatWest (121), HSBC (100), RBS (83), Yorkshire Building Society (62) and Mortgage Express (56) rounded out the top ten firms for mortgage complaints.
However, like Bank of Scotland’s figures, financial firms’ complaints about mortgages were significantly lower than those relating to PPI. While Lloyds TSB received 46 complaints about mortgages, it got 16,965 complaints about PPI.
In total, the FOS received 149,925 new complaints in H1, up 54% on the second half of 2010. Out of this, 98,632 cases were related to PPI. Out of the number of cases, 93% involved 157 financial firms out of more than 100,000 covered by the FOS.
In H1 2011, the FOS upheld an average of 47% of complaints in favour of consumers compared to 53% in H2 2010, which it said reflected the impact of the legal challenge some high street banks brought against it and the FSA.
Natalie Ceeney, chief executive and chief ombudsman, said:
“These latest figures show a significant increase in the number of new PPI complaints referred to the ombudsman during the first half of 2011.
“This period coincided with the time when most of the high street banks and some other financial businesses had put PPI complaints on hold, because of their legal challenge against the ombudsman service and FSA.
“As a result, complaints in this period about PPI were harder fought, and harder to resolve – particularly if we found in favour of a consumer. This data therefore gives only a partial view on the cases which we were working to resolve over this period.”