New data from the Financial Ombudsman Service (FOS) shows that there has been a jump of more than 40% in the number of financial services complaints during the first six months of 2024, while mortgage disputes dropped by more than a quarter.
In total, the FOS received 133,019 cases between January and June, a rise of 43% on a year ago.
At the same time, home finance and mortgage grievances dropped 26% to 3,685 cases during the same period.
Chief ombudsman and chief executive Abby Thomas says: “Businesses should put consumers at the heart of their service but the high level of complaints we receive shows that’s not always the case.
“It’s vital that businesses are open and transparent with their customers, treating them with fairness and understanding.”
The largest volume of complaints came from banking and credit cases, which accounted for 101,031 disputes – a rise of 78% over the previous year.
General insurance and pure protection cases were next on the list, which accounted for 24,496 cases, a fall of 8% in the same period.
Mortgages and home finance disputes were third on the list of financial services complaints.
Simplify Consulting lead consultant Dom House added: “Firms should now be looking at their complaints data to understand how they can reverse this trend and consider whether the changes they’ve made for Consumer Duty have had the impact intended.
“Consumers expectations have been raised as new technology becomes mainstream in the financial services industry and firms need to get a grip by addressing the imbalance between prevention and cure by focusing on the root cause and prevention of complaints before they are raised.”
He adds: “Consumer Duty has made complaints more visible to senior leadership in firms. This is a positive, and increasingly we are seeing firms not just reviewing the complaints numbers periodically, but taking a closer look at how the complaints function interacts with the rest of the business.
“Those that can build an effective complaints strategy, will not only be delivering better outcomes for clients and be meeting Consumer Duty requirements, they might well reduce the risk of losing a large proportion of their clients.”