FOS complaints hit record high

The FOS received 327,035 new complaints in the six months of the year and some 86% of those related to PPI mis-selling.

Natalie Ceeney, chief executive and chief ombudsman, said: “During the first six months of this year we sorted out a record number of complaints for people.”

But the ombudsman said some lenders were continuing to stall on repaying mis-sold PPI claims causing “long waits and unnecessary delays” for customers.

Ceeney said the ombudsman was “making real progress in tackling the customer-service fallout from the mis-selling of PPI, widely accepted as the largest financial mis-selling scandal.

“Disappointingly we are still seeing cases where businesses are not following our long-standing approach to PPI, resulting in long waits and unnecessary delays for consumers.”

The worst offender was the Bank of Scotland which had some 58,000 complaints about mis-selling levelled against it during the first half of the year. Lloyds TSB came in second just slightly behind Bank of Scotland having received just under 56,000 complaints.

Across all individual businesses included in the data, the uphold rate (where the ombudsman found in the consumer’s favour) ranged from 2% to 98%.