Find out who has been shopped to the Financial Ombudsman Service
This week, the Financial Ombudsman Service published its company by company breakdown of the complaints it received in the last six months of 2010. As well as providing a total figure for complaints, the bulletin also shows how many complaints each of these companies received in each category of the financial services, including general insurance.
Insurance Times has analysed these figures to create a table of the 50 companies, which have received the most complaints about their general insurance activities (see below).
These figures, like the global complaints statistics produced by the ombudsman service, are dominated by the high street banks. All but one of the 10 most complained about companies – Welcome Financial Services in seventh place - are high street lenders.
The picture for the banks looks even worse when the performance of their subsidiaries is taken into account. Tallying up all of the general insurance complaints against Lloyds TSB’s various companies generates a grand total of 13,812.
By contrast, the highest placed mainstream general insurer is AXA in 14th place, followed by Aviva in 17th.
The only insurance brokers featuring in the list are Hastings and BISL, the parent company of BGL, in 43rd and 45th place, respectively.
The majority of companies in the list are banks or loan providers, reflecting how the vast majority of the ombudsman’s general insurance cases are linked to complaints about alleged mis-selling of payment protection insurance products.
Unless Lloyds and others go belly up - an event still bordering on the unthinkable - these costs will not be visited upon the general insurance community via the Financial Services Compensation Scheme. Nevertheless, they illustrate the degree to which the PPI mis-selling scandal continues to drive the ballooning cost of the scheme.
1 Lloyds TSB - 8,378
2 HSBC Bank - 4,990
3 Capital One (Europe) Plc - 3,990
4 Bank of Scotland (Lloyds TSB) - 3,159
5 The Royal Bank of Scotland - 2,544
6 National Westminster Bank Plc (RBS) - 2,216
7 Welcome Financial Services Ltd - 2,119
8 Clydesdale Bank - 2,016
9 Black Horse Ltd (Lloyds TSB) - 1,928
10 Barclays Bank - 1,721
11 Santander UK Plc - 1,440
12 HFC Bank (HSBC) - 1,046
13 MBNA Europe Bank Ltd - 921
14 AXA Insurance UK Plc - 685
15 Nationwide Building Society - 637
16 Inter Partner Assistance - 581
17 Aviva Insurance UK Ltd - 539
18 Direct Line Insurance Plc (RBS) - 531
19 Egg Banking Plc (Citibank) - 508
20 Loans.co.uk Ltd (MBNA) - 497
21 Central Trust Plc - 473
22 Tesco Personal Finance PLC - 436
23 UK Insurance Lted (RBS) - 430
24 Eisis Ltd - 427
25 Firstplus Financial Group (Barclays) - 414
26 Royal & Sun Alliance Insurance Plc - 412
27 CitiFinancial Europe Plc (Citibank) - 376
28 Churchill Insurance Company Ltd (RBS) - 363
29 Marks & Spencer Financial Services plc (HSBC) - 296
30 Lloyds TSB General Insurance (Lloyds) - 266
31 Santander Cards UK Ltd - 245
32 Zurich Insurance Plc - 215
33 Europ Assistance Holdings - 200
34 Pinnacle Insurance Plc - 199
35 Wilmslow Financial Services Plc - 198
36 Allianz Insurance Plc - 193
37 UK Car Group Ltd - 187
38 The Co-operative Bank Plc - 184
39 The Society of Lloyd’s - 181
40 The National Insurance & Guarantee Corporation Ltd (RBS) - 180
41 Chartis Insurance UK Ltd - 147
42 Ageas Insurance Ltd - 144
43 Hastings Insurance Services - 141
44 Liverpool Victoria Insurance Company Ltd - 141
45 BISL Ltd - 137
46 Great Lakes Reinsurance - 132
47 St Andrew’s Insurance Plc (Lloyds TSB) - 131
48 Legal & General Insurance Ltd - 128
49 CIS General Insurance Limited (Co-op) - 125
50 Ocean Finance and Mortgages Ltd - 124
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