The Financial Ombudsman Service (FOS) handled 2,161,439 initial enquiries and complaints from consumers over the year 2012/13.
This equates to over 7,000 each working day.
Around one in four of the initial consumer enquiries it received turned into a formal dispute – a record 508,881 new cases, up 92% on the previous year.
Only 1.5% of total complaints were about mortgage intermediaries.
| complaints about mortgages | % |
|---|---|
| banks | 69 |
| mortgage intermediaries | 15 |
| building societies | 8 |
| IFAs | 2 |
| other (including non-bank mortgage providers) | 6 |
74% of new cases were about the sale of payment protection insurance (PPI), with the number of PPI complaints rising 140% to 378,699.
Investment-related complaints increased by 33%, while banking disputes and complaints about insurance other than PPI rose by 20% – resulting in the highest ever numbers of these cases.
62% of the total number of cases FOS dealt with related to four banking groups, while 4,819 businesses accounted for just 3% of its caseload. FOS resolved 223,229 cases, resulting in compensation for consumers in 49% of complaints.
It resolved 58% of all disputes within six months and 43% of non-PPI cases within three months.