During the months of April, May and June this year, FOS received 159,197 new complaints compared to 57,076 in quarter one last year whilst on a daily basis it receives 2,000 new PPI complaints.
In its July newsletter, FOS said: “The proportion of complaints we upheld in the consumers’ favour ranged from 1%, for complaints about SERPs, to 78% for complaints about PPI.
“Overall we found in favour of the consumer in around seven out of 10 cases during the 13 weeks from 1 April 2013.”
In comparison, 2% of the total complaints received were about mortgages, 0.5% related to mortgage endowments and 0.5% were about buildings insurance.
Nick Baxter, independent chairman of the Professional Financial Claims Association, formed to be the voice of ethical and professional claims management companies, said it was clear that the resolution process between banks and the consumer or claims management company was clearly not working.
He said: “That 83% of complaints received by the FOS are PPI shows that the system is breaking down in the complaint resolution at the bank stage.”
Baxter said it was understandable that there would be some cases where the bank and the customer or the claims management company have a genuine dispute and it needs to go to a third party to be settled.
But he added: “But you would think, based on the law of averages that the ratio of upheld complaints across the banks would be fairly similar because the FOS is an independent body but this is not the case. Some banks have a huge amount of upheld complaints which tells me that some banks are rejecting too many genuine cases.”
The latest complaints data by firm was published in February by the FOS, covering the period July to December 2012, showing PPI complaints against Barclays stood at 37,883, Bank of Scotland at 34,434 and Lloyds at 42,195. HSBC had 9573 PPI complaints received by the FOS, Nationwide had 8668 and Santander 3858.
Baxter said: “If somebody has been missold then it is wrong that they are put to further detriment by delaying their claim by putting it into the FOS process which can take 18 months.”
