The Financial Ombudsman Service (FOS) of UK threw out two-thirds of gripes against the most complained-about advisory groups in the first half of 2013.
During the six-month period, the number of Ombudsman complaints against national advice firms and networks has risen 15% to 327,035.
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According to figures from FOS, the number of claims against the six most complained about nationals and networks has risen from 629 in the second half of 2012, to 714 for the first six months of 2013.
On average, 33% of the 714 complaints against advisers handled by the FOS in the six months from 1 January were found in favour of the complainant, against an average of 64% across all businesses.
In total, six advisory groups have made it onto the FOS’s latest complaint leader board, which only lists those firms which had both received 30 complaints in the period and had at least a further 30 resolved by the Ombudsman.
The latest complaints data from the FOS showed that there were 292 complaints referred to the FOS about Sesame between January and June, a rise of 11% from 138 in the first half of 2012. Although it received a high number of complaints, only 20% were upheld.
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By GlobalDataOpenwork had 68% of 142 complaints against it rejected, while Intrinsic-bound Positive Solutions and wealth manager St James’s Place had 61% and 73% of cases respectively.
St James’s Place has received 97 FOS complaints, up 106% from 47 complaints during the same period last year. Personal Touch Financial Services saw its number of complaints double from 44 to 88, while complaints about Positive Solutions rose 55% from 40 to 62 over the same period.
Complaints about payment protection insurance (PPI) made up 86% of the total complaints referred to the ombudsman during the first half of 2013 – with 266,228 new PPI complaints compared to 211,885 in the last six months of 2012.
For complaints about financial products, the total numbers of complaints have referred to the ombudsman reduced by 15% from 71,366 to 60,807 during the first six months of the year.
The average figure for the advisory groups listed was skewed somewhat by the 65% of upheld complaints, reported IFA Chase de Vere.
More than 95% of the cases came from 195 financial businesses, out of more than 100,000 businesses the Ombudsman covers.
