Sometimes things do go wrong, but official complaints statistics suggest that building societies are better at dealing with issues than other providers.

Building societies had a disproportionately small number of new complaints. Societies accounted for 2% of banking and credit complaints received by the Financial Ombudsman Service (FOS) in the first half of 2021, and 11% of mortgage complaints. These compare to the sectors' 18% share of the savings market and 23% share of mortgages. 

Also, a lower proportion of closed complaints were resolved against building societies by the Financial Ombudsman.

Overall the Ombudsman found against societies in 18% of resolved cased, compared to 34% across all firms in total.

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