Surge in bank charge complaints
The Financial Ombudsman Service has seen a surge in complaints about bank charges, and is now investigating 1,000 new cases every week.
However, complaints about mortgage endowment policies are now beginning to tail off, it said in its annual report.
Meanwhile, the Ombudsman for Estate Agents, dealt with an 18% rise in complaints to it last year.
The number of investigations it carried out rose to 586, with just more than half of them being upheld.
Bank charges
The number of complaints about banking services investigated by the Financial Ombudsman rose by 47% in the past financial year to 20,000.
This increase has been driven by the flood of enquiries and complaints about current account charges
Financial Ombudsman Service
"This increase has been driven by the flood of enquiries and complaints about current account charges for customers who go overdrawn without prior authorisation," said its annual report.
By March this year, this barrage of initial complaints - at times running to 3,000 a day - was turning into 500 new formal investigations every week, since then shooting up to about 1,000 a week.
However, the Ombudsman said that in every case it has dealt with so far, the bank has refunded the disputed money, so the service has been unable to made a detailed investigation or decision.
Endowments
The huge number of cases about the mis-selling of mortgage endowment policies, far and away the biggest source of complaints in recent years, is at last starting to fall away.
"The number of endowment cases referred to the ombudsman service has this year fallen by a third to 46,100," said its chairman Sir Christopher Kelly.
"It is this decrease that lies behind the overall reduction in new cases handled by the ombudsman service this year," he pointed out.
Thus the Financial Ombudsman Service saw a 16% fall in the number of all new cases it took on during the past financial year, down from 113,000 to 94,000.
Estate agents
One reason for the increase in complaints about estate agents is that more of them have been joining the Ombudsman for Estate Agents scheme.
The number of estate agency offices covered by it rose by 52% to 7,666.
"When viewed against the number of house sale transactions in a year, frequently quoted at 1.2 million, the number is still thankfully small," said the Ombudsman Christopher Hamer.
The number of initial enquiries rose to 8,472.
Source: bbc.co.uk
Please post any news stories about IVAs here:
http://www.iva.co.uk/forum/default.asp?CAT_ID=5
See my Blog:
http://ivanews.blogs.iva.co.uk
