CHL reveals its complaints data

It revealed that of the 10 decisions it received from the FOS in the first half of the year all but one judgement was made in its favour.

And of the 77 complaints which the lender received during January to June 2013 it agreed to uphold two itself while 12 have been referred to the Ombudsman.

Bob Young, managing director of CHL Mortgages, said: “It has always been our policy to follow the publication of the Ombudsman’s complaints data by issuing our own figures for the same period.

“This allows us to be as transparent as possible about the level of complaints we are receiving and is a key indicator not just on the performance of the book but our historical lending policy and our ability to deal with the complaints we receive.”

Young said each complaint is reviewed by the senior management team - a process which he said had been highly successful and one CHL will be continuing with.

CHL does not appear in the official FOS statistics as the data released only covers financial businesses where it received 30 new cases and resolved at least 30 cases within the period.

The FOS revealed it had received a total of 327,035 new complaints during the first half of the year which have been made against 195 financial businesses.

In the mortgages and home finance category the top three firms for most new cases received by FOS were Bank of Scotland (927), Santander UK (774) and Northern Rock Asset Management (676).

The total percentage of all cases resolved in the consumer’s favour for this category was 26% although this was considerably higher for lenders such as Southern Pacific Mortgage Ltd (47%), Barclays Bank (41%) and Clydesdale Bank (36%).

Eight out of 10 complaints received were related to the sale of payment protection insurance products.

FOS upheld an average of 64% of complaints in the consumer’s favour; for PPI the resolved case figure is 75%.

Young said CHL is pleased with the low level of complaints it continues to receive and the small number which have been upheld by FOS given it manages 40,000 live mortgage accounts.

He said: “While we have yet to appear on the official FOS list because of our low numbers there are many who make continuous appearances.

“We put our small complaint rates down to the quality of our underwriting and processes and the fact that we are very much a hands-on and personal lender that wants to know our customers fully and make sure they are happy with our service.”