FCA overall complaints fall 2.1%

In the first half of 2015, Barclays received the most complaints about banking and credit cards – more than 140,000.

However, despite PPI claims falling, there were still 883,043 cases for financial firms to deal with.

The number of complaints about the advising, selling and arranging of these products more than doubled from 133,922 in the second half of 2014 to 276,071 complaints in the first half of this year.

PPI-related complaints remain the biggest source of grumbling among customers in the aftermath of the scandal, but they’re down 17 per cent in the first six months of the year compared to the same period in 2014, according to data from the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA). And those relating to investment linked annuities – by which older people receive a guaranteed minimum income with the chance of a top-up if markets rise – were up 21% to 791.

Last month the Financial Ombudsman Service – which handles complaints that can not be resolved – said that the number of people unhappy about their packaged accounts had “shot up”.

Prudential was most the complained about firm in terms of these products with 8,827 complaints.

PPI was the most complained about product, followed by current accounts with 506,326 complaints (up 31.2 per cent), “other” general insurance with 304,919 complaints (down 4.3 per cent), credit cards with 121,615 complaints (up 11.1 per cent) and savings including cash Isas, and other banking with 78,981 complaints (down 6.4 per cent).

Tip of the iceberg: The bottom patterned red line is largely PPI complaints.

The regulator noted that consumers made a total of 2.14m complaints to financial services firms in the first half of 2015. This compares to £2.44billion in the last six months of previous year.

Even though general insurance and pure protection complaints fell 13.6% to 1,204,783, complaints related to decumulation, life and pensions products rose 19.7% to 73,055.