The number of complaints sent to the Financial Ombudsman Service about self-invested personal pensions is on the rise.
The Fos received 1,385 complaints related to Sipps in the nine months between April and December 2016.
This is up from 1,288 for the same nine months in 2015.
Of those complaints, 56 per cent were upheld, up from 52 per cent, making SIPP complaints the most likely to be upheld across all types of financial services disuptes that are referred to the ombudsman.
In the last quarter of 2016 the Fos received 380 new SIPP complaints of which 47 percent were upheld.
The ombudsman figures also indicate there will be a year on year rise in complaints about SIPPs.
In the financial year ending in April there were 1,097 complaints received by the ombudsman, but in the figures up to the end of the third quarter in December there are already 1,042 received.
These figures are found in the latest edition of the Financial Ombudsman news, which has also has a report on age discrimination around mortgages - two thirds of age related complaints it receives concern mortgages.
Simon Pugh, ombudsman manager, reported progress on this issue, after a review carried out in 2015 which found that businesses' and consumers' understanding of the law around age discrimination varied widely.
"On the whole, lenders are more willing to work around age limits – which they’re entitled to set – particularly for existing customers," he said. "They’re also applying policy exceptions flexibly. Some of these developments – including some lenders’ decisions to revise their overall age criteria – have come about partly as a result of the pragmatic conversations we’ve had as part of resolving individual complaints."
The ombudsman's advice is that if a business does carry out a risk assessment where their customer’s age is considered, it should refer only to information that’s both relevant to assessing the risk and from a source it’s reasonable to rely on.
