Over 264,000 new cases submitted to the Financial Ombudsman Service (FOS) resulting in what are referred to as 1.2 million “front-line” enquiries and complaints. Over 157,000 were about mis-sold PPI. These statistics are contained in the recent FOS annual report 2011 -2012. This also states that this is a record number of complaints for a single financial product and represents 60 per cent of the cases received. The total number of complaints made to the FOS equates to over 5000 per day.
The Banks work hard to refund PPI claims
As the level of complaints rise against banks and other financial firms, most banks are working hard to ensure that claims are being processed efficiently and redress paid to those consumers who have been mis-sold PPI. It is widely known that the increase in complaints relating to the sale of financial products and the treatment of consumers who make a complaint is causing issues over service and response times to consumers. To be fair, what you don’t see in many headlines is that complaints against banks fell by 9 per cent in the year, which the FOS annual review also shows!
Claims companies managed nearly 70 per cent of PPI cases
It is also reported by the FOS in its annual review of “personal finance disputes” that 69 per cent of all PPI complaints were brought by claims companies. Recent activity has seen many new entrants to the claims management sector, these are perceived by some industry commentators and trade bodies as causing extra work for brokers in particular, some companies are, “taking a disappointingly lax approach to completing the questionnaire on behalf of consumers.” Other issues reported recently are that banks, financial firms and the FOS have their workload compounded by the number of “frivolous and vexatious” claims received; these totaled over 5600, this is more than double the previous year. We all wait with interest for the next release of financial data relating to claims and how it is reported.
