Adviser networks Sesame and Openwork have continued to see the number of complaints brought against them to the Financial Ombudsman Service increase, with Sesame seeing claim numbers surge by close to 90 per cent year on year in the second half of 2012.
Sesame received 263 complaints between July and December 2012, 87 per cent more than the 140 complaints it registered in the second half of 2011. In the first half of 2012 the network received 138 complaints, a rise of 82 per cent year on year.
Despite the rise in the number of complaints, uphold rates remain low for the firm at around 29 per cent.
Openwork received 132 complaints in the second half of last year, up from 116 in the final six months of 2011. In the first haf of 2012 the network saw 100 complaints, 75 per cent up against the corresponding period in 2011. Its uphold rate is higher at 52 per cent.
Despite the rise in complaints against several networks, however, advisory complaints overall remained low and continue to represent less than 1 per cent of Fos’s case load, the service said.
Unsurprisingly, major banking groups dominated the list of most complained about firms, with Lloyds Banking Group, Barclays, The Royal Bank of Scotland and HSBC collectively accounting for over 60 per cent of total complaints in the second half of 2012.
Fos said that new complaints of the big banks jumped 150 per cent in the second half of 2012, and a spokesman told FTAdviser, it is largely due to this that the Fos levy has increased.
Fos data reveal that it received 283,651 new complaints in the second half of 2012, of which 211,885 were attributable to payment protection insurance.
Positive Solutions was the only other advisory network to make the list, which only registers individual firms with more than 30 complaints, having been the subject of 77 claims between July and December last year. In the second half of 2011 it registered 60 complaints.
A spokesperson for Fos told FTAdviser: “Despite what advisers may think, it is unusual for an adviser to be complained about to us. The big banks by far have the highest amount of complaints.
“Banks need to sort out their complaints so we that we can focus on what we are supposed to be doing, which is sorting out individual complaints. We receive 10,000 new PPI complaints a week and the rest of our workload is not decreasing.
“This distorts things for consumers and they increasingly have to wait longer to get their complaints sorted.”
