FCA data reveals Britain’s worst bank

Barclays has emerged as Britain’s most complained about bank following the publication of new Financial Conduct Authority data which shows the total number of complaints reported by firms in the second half of 2016 was 3.04 million.

More than 438,000 of the complaints were about Barclays, which fielded them at a rate of more than 2,300 every single day during second half of last year, the FCA said.

The City watchdog’s figures also reveal that the total number of complaints against financial firms is now higher than previous reporting periods because of new FCA’s rules that mean all complaints are now captured in the data.

Barclays received 47 per cent more complaints than the next worst bank, and was responsible for 28 per cent of the entirety of complaints made in the second half of last year, with half of the complaints concerning banking products and credit cards.

Despite producing Britain’s first credit card 50 years ago, Barclays saw more complaints about its plastic than all of the complaints for every other bank, barring Lloyds and Bank of Scotland, combined.

When it came to complaints about cards, HSBC took second spot followed by Lloyds in third.

Frustrated Lloyds customers also made it the second worst performer overall after Barclays, with a total of more than 297,000 complaints, while Edinburgh-based Bank of Scotland, which is part of Lloyds Banking Group, received more than 267,000.

But BoS took top stop in the table for complaints about mortgage lending, with almost 22,000 disgruntled customers, followed by HSBC with 14,000 complaints.

The findings showed insurance was the most complained about element of the finance industry last year on the back of persistent Payment Protection Insurance (PPI) grievances.

And again Barclays topped the charts, with 160,650 complaints, again followed by Lloyds and Bank of Scotland.

Prudential Assurance Company, part of life firm Prudential, which employs more than 2000 people at its base near Stirling, topped the table for the most complaints in both the investments category and the decumulation and pensions category, but was 32nd most complained about firm overall.

The data reflects the fact that under the new rules, financial services must report all complaints, although firms have longer to resolve complaints less formally. Firms now have three days to address a complaint to a consumer’s satisfaction, this is up from the previous next business day time limit.

The FCA believes the new data set is more informative because it shows the number of complaints against size of the business. It also said it provides greater insight about the products that consumers complain about.

“This information will provide a better understanding of the areas where consumers are struggling to gain satisfaction”, the watchdog said. “Greater transparency of complaints information will enable consumers looking to invest or buy products to be better informed about the products that have caused concern for other consumers.”

Executive director of strategy and competition, Christopher Woolard, said: “Consumers want a simple way to complain that does not leave them out of pocket. And they want to be assured that their concerns will be dealt with fairly and quickly.

“These data will provide us with improved intelligence on complaints including new detailed data to show where industry is potentially failing consumers at product level”.

Payment protection insurance (PPI) is the most complained about product. The total number of PPI complaints was 895,000. Excluding PPI, the number of complaints was 2.15 million. Current accounts were the next most complained about product with around 514,000.

The total redress paid to consumers was £1.9 billion in the second half of 2016. When all redress payments related to PPI are excluded, the redress figure is approximately £0.3 billion during the same time period.

Further firm-level data are available on the FCA’s downloadable tables.