The Financial Ombudsman Service (FOS) has revealed it has had its busiest year ever, which shows that the relationship between banks and their customers is at its lowest ebb, says uSwitch.com.
Stefan Maryniak, lending expert at uSwitch.com, says: “This has been a record year for the banks, but for all the wrong reasons. The fact that the Ombudsman has been the busiest it has ever been is a worrying sign of just how bad things have got in the banking industry. The lion’s share of complaints was about PPI, and Lloyds had most of these, which may explain why it moved so quickly to draw a line under the issue and pulled out of the legal appeal.
“The good news is that other areas have actually seen a decline in the number of complaints. Whether this is down to the banks improving or just because consumers have focussed on the well-documented PPI issue remains to be seen.
“Such has been the furore over PPI that it will have skewed FOS’s complaints findings. If the time and money the banks are putting into resolving the PPI scandal is successful, next year’s figures may give a truer indication of where the problems lie. If we see a further decline in overall complaints it will suggest that the banks are at last listening to their customers. This will go some way to repairing the failing relationship between the banks and consumers.”
Source : uSwitch.com
