PPI tops high street complaints list
The UK’s biggest high street banks were flooded with complaints in the first half of the year and the lion’s share of grievances were about payment protection insurance, official figures have shown.
Lloyds Banking Group, Royal Bank of Scotland, Barclays, HSBC and Santander have seen complaints about PPI soar, and in some cases double, while complaints in other areas fell.
RBS, including NatWest, received 491,735 complaints from January to June, of which 365,000 related to PPI. Excluding PPI, complaints to NatWest were down 12 per cent and up 3 per cent for RBS, compared to the second half of 2011.
Lloyds Group, which includes Lloyds TSB, Halifax and Bank of Scotland, saw 860,000 customer complaints in the first half of the year, a 145 per cent year-on-year increase.
However, excluding PPI, Lloyds reported an 18 per cent year-on-year fall in complaints. A spokesman said it was “on track” to achieve a target rate of 1.3 complaints for every 1000 accounts by the end of the year.
Barclays received 442,266 complaints, an increase of 76 per cent. Excluding PPI, the bank, which has suffered a series of recent scandals, saw complaints fall 9 per cent to 161,908.
HSBC had 170,064 complaints and Spanish bank Santander said its complaints rose by 42 per cent. A spokesman said complaints about PPI had doubled but 40 per cent of these were not legitimate.
Andrew Whiteley, managing director of Hertfordshire-based Provisio Chartered Financial Planners, said: “If the public is given carte blanche to complain about PPI, this has to be expected. It would be better if the data showed the number of complaints in proportion to the number of customers.”