Credit, Collections & Insolvency News
Latest quarterly figures have shown that complaints to the Financial Ombudsman Service (FOS) fell to their lowest in more than a year in the April to June.
Figures show that the FOS received 68,000 new cases in the period, with this down from 74,600 complaints seen a year ago. Complaints about motor finance were the most common grievance but the total dropped to 21,500 cases from 36,000.
Complaints regarding fraud and scams fell to 6,800 from 8,800. The data covers a period that saw a series of FOS reforms that introduced tighter restrictions on complaints from professional representatives. As of April, banks are not charged for the first three complaints they receive in the financial year.
A case fee of £650 is applied to subsequent complaints, with this reduced to £475 if a complaint is dismissed, withdrawn, abandoned, or found to be outside the FOS’s jurisdiction. The figures show that 30,800 cases were brought by professional representatives in the first quarter of the 2025/26 financial year, compared to 36,600 in the same period last year.
The fall in case numbers has also been particularly significant across certain issues, for instance complaints about perceived irresponsible and unaffordable lending have halved. In the first three months of this financial year, FOS received 10,000 new cases, compared to 21,600 at the same time in 2024/25.
Similarly, the most complained-about issue, motor finance commission, has dropped from 36,000 cases in the last three months of 2024/25 to 21,500 cases processed in the first quarter of this financial year.
The other common case area which has seen a significant drop is fraud and scams, with consumers lodging 6,800 complaints, of which half (3,400) are about authorised push payments (APP), where consumers inadvertently transfer money to a fraudster’s account. In the first quarter of 2024/25 consumers submitted around 8,800 fraud and scam complaints.
Whilst this period shows 30,800 cases were brought by professional representatives, compared to 36,600 in the first quarter last year, it is likely that the next set of quarterly data will show even fewer complaints brought through this route.
Prior to charging, FOS saw a high proportion of withdrawn and abandoned cases brought by professional representatives however it anticipates that this will drop over the next few months as representatives bring better-evidenced complaints to the service.
James Dipple-Johnstone, Interim Chief Ombudsman at the Financial Ombudsman Service, said “Following a year of extraordinary demand, we recently announced reforms to modernise the UK’s redress system, making it more agile and responsive and a much better fit for today’s economy.
“We have acted on feedback from our Call for Input and reviewed a range of our processes – and have already made changes. We’ll continue to listen to our industry partners so that, working together, we can have a system that’s fit for the future.”
