Aggregate complaints data: 2020 H2

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 H2[1]

Download the aggregate complaints data[2] (XLSX)

• Key findings
• Opened complaints[3]
• Closed complaints[4]
• Complaints upheld[5]
• Redress paid[6]
• About the complaints data[7]

Key Findings

• In 2020 H2 firms received 2.19m complaints, 26% lower than in 2020 H1 (2.96m 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 1.80m complaints in 2020 H1 to 1.02m complaints in 2020 H2.  Within this product group, the largest decrease was for Payment Protection Insurance (PPI), with a 77% decrease from 1.09m complaints received in 2020 H1 to 256,000 complaints in 2020 H2.
• Excluding PPI, the volume of complaints received by firms increased by 3.3% in 2020 H2 when compared with 2020 H1, from 1.87m to 1.93m (figure 1).
• The most complained about products in 2020 H2 were current accounts (23% of all complaints), PPI (12%), credit cards (11%), other general insurance products (11%) and motor & transport insurance (9%).
• Complaints about insurance and pure protection products decreased from 7.1 complaints per 1,000 policies in force in 2020 H1 to 2.0 complaints per 1,000 policies in force in 2020 H2. Over the same period, complaints about home finance products increased from 8.1 to 9.6 complaints per 1,000 balances outstanding, while investment products increased from 1.8 to 1.9 complaints per 1,000 accounts.
• PPI complaints took longer to resolve on average compared to the previous period as well as other product groups.  Table 1 shows 93% of PPI complaints were closed after 8 weeks in 2020 H2, up from 84% in 2020 H1.
• The total redress paid for all complaints, including PPI, decreased by 35% from £2,230m in 2020 H1 to £1,439m in 2020 H2, as shown in Table 2. The table also shows the average redress paid per upheld PPI complaint increased from £2,043 in 2020 H1 to £2,281 in 2020 H2, while it decreased from £192 to £180 for all other complaints, excluding PPI, during the same time period.  

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[8].