For the last 6 months of 2009, 27,137 compliants were received by the FOS for LLoyds (9,952), Barclays (9,836) and Bank of Scotland (7,349) the Financial Ombudsman Service shows in their latest figures.
Financial Intemediary firms St James’s Place and Sesame had 45 and 98 complaints respectively.
David Thomas, interim chief ombudsman of Fos, said: “While the number of cases referred by consumers to the ombudsman has continued to increase substantially, it is encouraging to see that some businesses are committed to handling complaints better.
“However, there is evidently still room for significant improvement in the way other financial businesses handle complaints – judged by the proportion of cases where we overturn the decision that the businesses have themselves come to in their own earlier investigation of their customer complaints.
“The data we have released today 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.”
