Lloyds is yet again the worst offender for wrongly rejecting complaints

Lloyds Bank is yet again the worst of the major banks and building societies for wrongly rejecting both payment protection insurance (PPI) and other banking complaints, new figures from the Financial Ombudsman Service show.

Lloyds said sorry for its huge part in the PPI mis-selling scandal in 2011, and pledged to compensate victims. Despite those promises, 93% of PPI claims against Lloyds that the Ombudsman adjudicates on are upheld in consumers' favour, by far the worst rate of any major bank.

During the first six months of the year, the free independent complaints arbitrator took on a total of 173,994 new cases – an increase of 8% on the previous period where it received 161,649 new cases. Here's a breakdown of those complaints:

• Of the total cases referred to the ombudsman in the first half of 2015, payment protection insurance (PPI) complaints made up over half (55%) – with 94,091 new PPI complaints, a 10% fall compared with the previous period.


• For complaints about financial products other than PPI, the number increased to 79,550, a rise of 45%. The Ombudsman says this is largely due to an increase in complaints about packaged bank accounts brought by claims-management companies.


• The average uphold rate – where the ombudsman found in the consumer's favour – was 57% – ranging from 5% to 94% across the individual businesses.


• For the ombudsman to uphold a complaint, it must first have been thrown out by the firm in question. So the providers with the highest uphold rates against them are the institutions wrongly rejecting too high a proportion of complaints.

If you've taken a complaint to a financial provider and want to know how to take it further, see our Financial Rights guide for help.

If you're after step-by-step help on how to reclaim mis-sold PPI or a mis-sold package account, see our Reclaim PPI for Free and Reclaim Package Accounts guide – you can do this yourself for free, you don't need to use a claims handler.

Provider-by-provider results

Of the most complained about providers, Lloyds Bank wrongly turned away the most complaints, with a huge 93% of consumers' PPI complaints and 78% of all complaints including those about PPI upheld by the ombudsman.

During the last six months of 2014 Lloyds Bank was also the major provider that wrongly turned away the most complaints, with 82% of consumers' PPI complaints and 74% of all complaints including those about PPI upheld by the ombudsman (see the Lloyds complaints MSE News story for more).

Building society Nationwide fared best of the major providers, with only 5% of PPI complaints and 9% of all complaints about it upheld by the ombudsman.

The table below shows the most complained about major providers and the number of complaints upheld by the ombudsman:

MoneySavingExpert.com has contacted Lloyds Bank for a response and we will add this in as soon as we get one.