Prudential tops the list of most complained about firms in the decumulation, life and pensions group, Financial Conduct Authority data revealed, with the category as a whole seeing almost a 20 per cent jump in overall complaints.
The latest complaints data for the first half of this year, published by the Financial Conduct Authority, showed that the top five most moaned about firms in the life and pensions category were Prudential with 8,827 complaints, Friends Life with 7,013, Royal London with 5,688, Aviva with 4,342, and Scottish Widows with 4,110.
The top five most complained about mortgage and equity release lenders were Bank of Scotland with 8,811 complaints, Santander with 8,517, Northern Rock Asset Management with 6,015, HSBC with 5,998, and Barclays with 5,774.
For investments, Santander received 4,375 complaints, HSBC got 2,932, Barclays received 2,759, Halifax Share Dealing got 1,724 and Equiniti Financial Services Limited had 1,626.
Overall, the most complained about firms were Barclays Bank, Lloyds Bank, Bank of Scotland, NatWest, and HSBC.
The ‘decumulation, life and pensions’ product group saw an increase of 19.7 per cent to 73,055 complaints, while ‘general insurance and pure protection’, which contains payment protection insurance related complaints, saw a drop of 13.6 per cent to 1,204,783.
Overall, complaints decreased by 2.1 per cent compared to the previous six months, driven by the 16.6 per cent fall in PPI related complaints to 883,043 when compared with the last six months of last year.
However, when PPI is excluded, complaints continued to increase, this time by 11.6 per cent to 1,255,166 between the second half of 2014 and the first half of 2015.
The total redress paid fell by 18.9 per cent to £1.98bn in the first half of 2015 from £2.44bn in the second half of 2014, with 83.2 per cent of this amount (£1.65bn) related to ‘general insurance and pure protection’ products, which include PPI products.
PPI was the most complained about product, followed by current accounts with 506,326 complaints (up 31.2 per cent), ‘other’ general insurance with 304,919 complaints (down 4.3 per cent), credit cards with 121,615 complaints (up 11.1 per cent) and savings including cash Isas, and other banking with 78,981 complaints (down 6.4 per cent).
Christopher Woolard, director of strategy and competition at the FCA, said: “While the ongoing fall in PPI complaints is welcome, this is the second half-year running that we have seen complaints about banking products rise.
“It is clear that firms need to look at the causes for this rise and where necessary take action to address the causes of the trend.
“Ensuring good consumer outcomes should be at the heart of firms’ activities and we want to see complaints fall in the future as firms seek to ensure that consumers get the right products and services.”
The FCA’s data comes after the Financial Ombudsman Service reported it received 161,649 new cases during the second half of 2014, down 15 per cent from the first half of 2014.
emma.hughes@ft.com
