Barclays Bank received more customer complaints

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Barclays Bank received more customer complaints than any other UK financial institution in the first half of 2012, according to data from the Financial Services Authority, with 442,266 disputes recorded in the six months to June.
The figures, published on Thursday, show a big jump in the number of customer complaints made to the bank, which has been at the centre of several scandals this year, with disputes rising from the 281,484 recorded in the last half of

 

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It comes as the total number of complaints received by financial institutions leapt by 59 per cent to 3.5m compared with the previous six months.
The surge in disputes was largely a result of a rise in claims over payment protection insurance, the worst mis-selling scandal to emerge in a decade.
The general insurance and pure protection category – dominated by PPI complaints – rose 99 per cent to 2.5m. Within this group, disputes over PPI rose by 129 per cent to 2.2m, representing 62 per cent of total complaints.
PPI has become one of the costliest consumer scandals for UK banks. They have already paid close to £5bn to customers who were sold PPI that they did not want or need and the five biggest banks have set aside more than £9bn.
While Barclays recorded the highest number of complaints by brand, Lloyds Banking Group, which includes Lloyds TSB, Bank of Scotland, Halifax, and Cheltenham and Gloucester had the largest number per banking group.
Lloyds received 805,716 complaints, a huge rise from 454,134 in the second half of 2011. Royal Bank of Scotland, which includes the NatWest brand, attracted the second highest level of complaints at 491,735.
Santander received 240,597 complaints in total, with HSBC recording 170,064. Building societies fared better than their banking peers, with Nationwide Building Society receiving 44,661 complaints.
According to the data, the number of banking complaints increased by 5 per cent to 828,040 in the first half of 2012. Within the banking category, the percentage of complaints about current accounts dropped by 13 per cent despite concerns by the regulator that some packaged current accounts are being mis-sold to consumers.