The Ombudsman’s latest figures covering 1 July to 31 December 2015, showed that Sesame received 116 complaints against 172 six months earlier – a 33% reduction. The amount of complaints upheld also dropped from 27% to 23%.
Openwork followed Sesame with 79 complaints with 19% of these upheld, down from 111 and 25% six months earlier.
Complaints within the mortgages and home finance sector also dropped, down to 5,267 in the six months to 31 December. This is an 18% drop on the previous six months and 10% fall year-on-year.
Payment Protection Insurance (PPI) continued to dominate complaints by product sector, racking up a hefty 92,667 complaints in the second half of 2015. However, this has fallen by 2% on the previous period and 12% compared to a year earlier.
Chief ombudsman Caroline Wayman said complaints about PPI continued to make up over half of the Ombudsman’s workload.
“During 2015, PPI complaints finally began to approach stable levels – but we’re still seeing the volume of cases at a much higher level than many people expected,” she added.
“There are many factors that can influence the complaints we see, from fluctuations in the stock market to extreme weather conditions – and more people knowing their rights when things go wrong. That’s why I believe it’s important that we continue to find new ways to work so we can resolve complaints quickly, while sharing our knowledge so businesses can avoid the ‘big claims issues’ of the past.”
Lloyds Banking Group-owned, Bank of Scotland, is still the provider which was received the most complaints relating to mortgages, totaling 638 compared to 897 in the first six months of 2015. The bank was followed by Santander, Barclays, Legal and General Partnership and Northern Rock Asset Management.
Legal and General is the only firm in the top five to see complaints rise year-on-year up by 3% to 408 in the second half of 2015, but complaints fell 34% when compared with the first six months of 2015.
