Worst banks for complaints named and shamed

Worst banks for complaints named and shamed

The Financial Ombudsman Service (FOS) has for the first time published the names of the worst offending financial services companies, with the five major high street banking names accounting for the majority of complaints from the public.

The big five high street banks account for more than 38,286 cases of the total of nearly 70,000 received by the ombudsman in the six months to 30 June 2009.

Lloyds, including its many subsidiaries having acquired HBOS topped the table with 15,233 complaints.

The Royal Bank of Scotland group was responsible for 5,533 of the complaints received by the ombudsman.

The ombudsman received 8,283 complaints from irate customers about Barclays Bank, with its subsidiaries accounting for just over 500 more.

Santander-owned Abbey was behind 2,493 complaints.

HSBC group came fifth in the table with 2,363 complaints, while Alliance & Leicester notched up 1,786.

The chairman of the FOS, Sir Christopher Kelly, said: ‘I will now be writing to the chairmen of the financial businesses that generate the largest proportion of our complaints workload, to ask them to consider very carefully both their own complaints performance – as reflected in the data we are publishing today – and the complaints performance of their competitors.’

The size of each group is obviously one factor to consider in considering the number of complaints. However, the ombudsman stated: ‘Experts consulted by the ombudsman have been unable so far to agree how size (or market share) should be taken into account, when comparing complaints statistics across the financial services sector.’


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