Aggregate complaints data: 2020 H1

We use the complaints data to help assess how well firms are treating their customers and how their performance changes over time. We also use this data to guide our work in supervising firms and markets and to highlight potential concerns with specific financial products.

Aggregate complaints data sortable tables: 2020 H1

Download the aggregate complaints data[1] (XLSX)

• Key findings
• Opened complaints[2]
• Closed complaints[3]
• Complaints upheld[4]
• Redress paid[5]
• About the complaints data[6]

Key Findings

• Firms received 2.96m complaints in 2020 H1, 52% lower than in 2019 H2 (6.10m complaints). These are the lowest levels recorded since 2016 H2 (figure 1).
• The insurance and pure protection product group saw the largest decrease in complaints received by firms, from 4.68m complaints in 2019 H2 to 1.80m complaints in 2020 H1.  Within this product group, the largest decrease was for Payment Protection Insurance (PPI), from 3.85m complaints received in 2019 H2 to 1.09m in 2020 H1. This follows the passing of the PPI deadline (29 August 2019) set by us.
• The volume of all other complaints (excluding PPI) decreased by 20% in 2020 H1 when compared with 2019 H2, from 2.25m to 1.87m (figure 1).
• After PPI, the most complained about products in 2020 H1 were current accounts (16% of all complaints), credit cards (8%) and other general insurance products (7%).
• Banking and credit card products received 3.3 complaints per 1,000 accounts in 2020 H1, a decrease from 4.2 complaints per 1,000 accounts in 2019 H2. Over the same period, complaints about insurance and pure protection products decreased from 17.8 to 7.0 complaints per 1,000 balances outstanding, while investment products decreased from 2.3 to 1.8 complaints per 1,000 accounts.
• Travel insurance was one of the few products within the insurance and pure protection product group to show an increase in complaints received, from 28,409 in 2019 H2 to 44,767 in 2020 H1. Comparison with time periods from 2016 H2 onward show this to be the highest volume of travel insurance complaints recorded. This increase is most likely due to the impact of Covid-19, although we cannot evidence this through our data.
• PPI complaints were reported as taking longer to resolve on average compared to the previous period as well as other product groups.  Table 1 shows 84% of PPI complaints were closed after 8 weeks in 2020 H1, up from 41% in 2019 H2. Complaints about other products also took slightly longer on average to resolve, with the percentage of complaints (excluding PPI) closed within 3 days decreasing from 55% in 2019 H2 to 49% in 2020 H1.
• The average redress paid per upheld complaint (excluding PPI) increased from £185 in 2019 H2 to £190 in 2020 H1, as shown in Table 2. The table also shows redress paid for complaints about PPI that were not upheld increased from £10.7m to £30.8m in 2020 H1.

While preparing the 2024 H2 publication, we identified a discrepancy in our calculations that led to an overstatement of the total number of accounts in the ‘Banking and Credit Cards’ and ‘Investments’ product groups. This figure is used to calculate the relevant contextualisation metric in Figure 2. The updates are included in the 2024 H2 and future publications. This publication has not been updated.

Chart tips: hover over data series to view the data values and filter the data categories by clicking on the legend.

Note: complaints recorded for 2016 H2 include firms whose reporting periods ended on or after 30 December 2016. These firms accounted for approximately 90% of complaints.

Complaints closed 

Firms have 8 weeks after receiving a complaint to provide a written response. 

Table 1 – Complaints closed in the period

Source: FCA complaints data

Table 2 – Complaints upheld and redress paid

Source: FCA complaints data

Copyright

The data on this page is available under the terms of the Open Government Licence[7].