September 04, 2009

Britain’s financial services industry was bombarded with more than 9m complaints between 2006 and 2008.The staggering figure was published by the Financial Services Authority (FSA) today, the first set of aggregate numbers ever released by the City watchdog. It appears things have been getting worse rather than better. The volume of complaints rose by 5.7% over the three year period to 1.48m.

There were more than 870,000 complaints about banking and loans during the second half of 2008, around 61% of all grumbles. There have been almost 5m since 2006.Regulated firms received over 2m complaints in the first half of 2007, the worst period, with 652,000 made about overcharging and 332,000 about poor customer service. They were still the most common complaints in the second half of last year.