UK banks receive 7,000 complaints a day, figures published for first time show

News - Banking

Written by Ray Clancy

Thursday, 30 September 2010 08:12

Britain’s worst banks in terms of dealing with customers complaints are named and shamed today (Thursday Sept 30) as figures reveal that there are 7,000 complaints every day.

Bailed out Lloyds Banking Group topped the bank complaints league with nearly 290,000 gripes about issues such as poor service, bad advice, and charges over the past six months, the figures from the Financial Services Authority (FSA) show.

Fellow high street giants Barclays and Santander were the next biggest offenders, with 250,667 and 244,978 complaints respectively. It is the first time the FSA has detailed the findings by firm.

State-controlled Royal Bank of Scotland, whose businesses include RBS and NatWest, drew nearly 140,000 complaints, while HSBC attracted 81,271. Altogether bank and building society customers made a total of 1.25 million complaints, the FSA said, up 5% on the same period last year.

Among the data published by the FSA was the proportion of complaints dealt with within eight weeks. Lloyds TSB secured a completion rate of 97% for customers, while Barclays dealt with 91% of cases within the period. Santander closed only 46% of complaints within eight weeks.

The FSA is proposing changes to its complaints handling rules to help drive up standards.
The proposals include making banks identify a senior manager responsible for complaints handling and creating remedies for common problems. Officials also want to stop banks sending letters which reject complaints but fail to explain that customers can challenge them and go to the Financial Ombudsman Service.

‘Good complaints handling standards should be the rule not the exception and complaints handling forms a key part of our intensive and intrusive approach to supervise how firms deal with their customers,’ said Sheila Nicoll, the FSA’s director of conduct policy.

However, the British Bankers’ Association said the complaint figures should be taken in context with the number of bank accounts. ‘The larger the bank is the more complaints it is statistically likely to receive and with more than 140 million bank accounts in the UK and billions of transactions a year there will inevitably be instances when things go wrong,’ it said.

Lloyds said it is also working to improve its customer relations. ‘Our relationship with our customers is at the heart of our business and we take all feedback very seriously. Like every organisation we know there are areas where we can improve and we are working with our customers to do just that. The vast majority are happy with the service we provide and this is reflected in the low number of complaints we receive relative to the high number of accounts our customers hold,’ a spokeswoman said.

The FSA, which has published the full list for the first time, has also proposed a series of changes to the way complaints are dealt with. They include stopping banks sending letters which reject complaints but fail to explain that customers can challenge this and go to the Financial Ombudsman Service and stipulating that banks identify a senior manager responsible for complaints handling.

‘We will also be responding in full to the FSA’s consultation on changing the complaints handling regime. We agree on the need for a clear, transparent complaints process which sets out all the options for customers,’ the BBA added.

Marc Gander of the Consumer Action Group said it is clear that the banks, who are supported by billions of pounds of taxpayers money, are failing customers. ‘These figures are quite extraordinary. You have to wonder where the billions of pounds of taxpayers money is being spent, it certainly isn’t going on complaint handling,’ he added.