Lloyds Group tops ombudsman’s list for most complaints
LLOYDS Banking Group topped the list of financial services companies that consumers have registered complaints with the Financial Ombudsman Service (FOS) about in the last six months, its latest figures revealed yesterday.
Government-backed Lloyds TSB, was the subject of some 12,750 complaints during the six-month period.
That was almost 5,000 more than Barclays Bank, which received 7,991 complaints, and twice as many as Bank of Scotland, with 6,211 complaints. Meanwhile, another of the government-backed banks, Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS) – which owns NatWest – received a total of 5,060 complaints during the period with NatWest receiving 2,810 complaints and RBS receiving 2,250 complaints.
The Ombudsman received a total of 84,212 new complaints during the first six months of the year – a small increase on the 82,136 cases received in the second half of 2009. On average it upheld 44 per cent of complaints in favour of consumers, compared to 53 per cent in the second half of 2009.
During the period 15,000 complaints about unauthorised overdraft charges were reviewed and closed following the Supreme Court’s unanimous ruling last year that the fairness of unauthorised overdraft charges could not be challenged on the basis of the “test case” referred by the Office of Fair Trading (OFT).
The latest data covers complaints received by the FOS between 1 January and 30 June 2010.