Barclays tops FSA complaints table
Barclays has emerged as the UK’s most complained about financial institution, with more than 200,000 customers lodging a dispute with the bank in the second half of last year.
Figures released by the Financial Services Authority (FSA) showed 205,000 new banking complaints were lodged with Barclays in the second half of 2010, a rise of 10,000 on the first half.
The figure placed Barclays ahead of Santander, the Spanish-owned banking group, which had 165,000 new banking complaints, a significant drop from 216,000 in the first half.
Details about Barclays’ complaint spike came in the same month Bob Diamond, Barclays’ chief executive, was revealed as the UK’s highest-paid bank boss on a salary and bonus of £6.75m for 2010.
Barclays said yesterday that the FSA had not published its re-stated figures which actually showed a 4 per cent reduction in overall complaint numbers, which included the banking, general insurance and investment categories.
“We re-stated our H1 numbers and this resulted in an overall rise in the volume of complaints for that period,” said Barclays, which has 21m customers in the UK.
“We have actually seen a modest improvement in numbers in H2. The FSA has not updated its website with our re-stated data.”
The FSA said yesterday that its data was correct at the time of publication.
Meanwhile, banking complaints at state-backed NatWest, part of the Royal Bank of Scotland group, jumped by a third in the second half of 2010 to reach 87,000, according to the FSA data.
Lloyds TSB, another part taxpayer-owned bank, saw its banking complaints fall from 104,000 to 90,000. However, general insurance complaints at Lloyds more than doubled to 85,000.
The FSA first began publishing firm-specifc complaints data in September 2010, in the hope it would drive up standards of customer service at companies named in its table.
The FSA’s data, which is published every six months, showed overall complaint numbers rising 3 per cent rise to 1.8m.
Disputes about general insurance and pure protection increased by 37 per cent to 710,000, with more than half of those as a result of ‘advising selling and arranging’ causes.
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