Complaints about financial services have dropped off in the past few months as the number of new payment protection insurance (PPI) cases falls.
The Financial Conduct Authority has revealed that in the first six months of 2014, consumers made 2.36 million complaints about financial firms or the products they sell.
That’s a 5% decline compared to the same period last year, although the number of PPI complaints fell by 11% to 1.24 million.
Generally, most complaints were about PPI, bank accounts and savings products like ISAs.
The most complaints were against high street banks – Barclays (278,000); Bank of Scotland (265,000); Lloyds (264,000), National Westminster (140,000) and Santander (135,000).
Platform moans
“This is to be expected,” said an FCA spokesman. “After all, these are the products most consumers have and some of the companies most-used by consumers.
“Investments do not figure high up the list because fewer consumers have them, but we are still concerned about the number of fraudsters trying to scam people out of their hard-earned cash.”
Investors made 45,000 complaints to providers in the six months – up 7% on last year.
The number of consumers with concerns about structured products went down 31% to 1,576, while complaints about investment trusts were also down 52% to just 718.
Meanwhile, moans about investment managers, including platforms, by 28% from 6,492 last year to 8,336 in the first half of 2014.
Warnings about bogus advisers
Dealing with an unregulated firm
If you buy shares, save money or invest with an unregulated firm, you lose any protection offered by the Financial Ombudsman and the Financial Services Compensation Scheme. Broadly, you have no independent place to complain if the deal goes wrong and are unlikely to win any compensation.
Checking if a firm is regulated
Go to the Financial Services Register to check if a firm is regulated in the UK.
Reporting a suspected bogus adviser
Find out how to report unauthorised advisers on the FCA web site
Difficult to draw any conclusions from a six month sample of FOS data. Certain types of product (eg. structured products) don’t fail very often, but when they do, that’s when people realise they may have been mis-sold their products, and you get a batch of complaints.