FCA sees complaints rise 10% to 4 million

PPI continued to be the most complained about product, accounting for 42% of all complaints, while a number of high-profile cases of disruption to retail banking services also sparked a rise in complaints.

Around half of the increase in other complaints excluding PPI was due to complaints about TSB made by banking and credit card customers following its move to a new IT platform in April.

Across all groups, home finance products continue to receive the most complaints as a proportion of the total number of products involved. This is despite home finance products only accounting for 3% of total complaint volumes in 2018 H1. Almost 10 complaints were received by firms for every 1,000 home finance product accounts with outstanding balances.

Bank of Scotland topped the list of home finance firms with the most complaints at 24,129, followed by HSBC and Santander.

Christopher Woolard, executive director of strategy and competition at the FCA, said: "Firms need to be doing all that they can to reduce complaints. It is clear that firms need to look at the cause of the rise in complaints and address these issues to prevent further increases.

"It should be a priority for firms to ensure good consumer outcomes are achieved and they should be making sure that they are taking the right steps to treat customers fairly.

"We are encouraged to see that figures are showing that more consumers are making a decision on whether to complain about PPI."