Financial service complaints hit record levels

The numbers of people in the UK complaining about the financial services they have received have reached record levels, it has been revealed.

An unprecedented number of almost 800,000 enquiries were made to the Financial Ombudsman Service (FOS) over the course of the past year and more than 123,000 official complaints were made.

Thousands of people have seen their debt management difficulties worsened by overdraft charges and related issues were singled out as a prime concern for disgruntled consumers contacting the FOS.

Sir Christopher Kelly, the chairman of the Ombudsman remarked: “The sudden surges in banking and insurance disputes this year have meant that predicting, managing and dealing with complaint volumes has been more of a challenge for us organisationally than ever before.”

British banks recently made clear their intention to appeal against the High Court’s decision to allow the Financial Services Authority to rule on the fairness or otherwise of the charges they levy for unauthorised overdraft use.

Written by Dan Mather