Building Societies Association
Consumer complaints to the Financial Ombudsman Service (FOS) about building societies remained low at just 2% of all new complaints in 2009/10, the same as the previous year. The review for the year shows that 61% of complaints were about banks, up slightly from 59% last year, 11% about general insurers, 8% life insurance and investment product-providers, 4% mortgage intermediaries, 2% IFAs and 2% building societies.
The FOS had a higher than expected number of complaints in 2009/10. 163,012 new cases – 9% more than forecast and 28% higher than the previous year’s record number. The figure is the highest number of new cases the FOS has received during any year in their ten-year history. Complaints about PPI and current accounts drove this increase.
Commenting on the building society figure, Chris Lawrenson, BSA Head of Legal Policy, said: “In a year where the FOS experienced their highest number of new cases ever, it’s encouraging that only a tiny fraction of building society customers felt unhappy enough with the service to complain to the FOS.
“Recent independent research from GfK NOP shows that mutuals have consistently outperformed plc banks across various aspects of customer service, including treating customers fairly, value for money and being trusted to give good advice - the FOS data helps back this up.”
Link to FOS 2009/10 annual review
