Latest FCA complaints data reveals drop in motor-related disputes

The latest FCA complaints data, published in April 2025 and covering the second half of 2024, paints a nuanced picture of the insurance sector’s customer experience landscape.

While some product lines have seen a fall in complaint volumes, others continue to grapple with persistent or growing issues.

The dataset is similar to one published by the Financial Ombudsman Service (FOS), but as the FCA explained, “our data includes all complaints received by firms, whereas the FOS’s data only includes complaints referred to them when the consumer and firm do not agree on a resolution”.

The most complained about insurance line, motor insurance, saw a drop in complaint volumes in the second half of 2024, with 255,000 complaints lodged in the period, down from 277,000 in the first half of the year.

The fall represented a second successive semester of declining complaints, reversing a trend that had seen motor disputes climb in every reporting period except one since 2020 H2 – a rise of 43% over three years to a high of 281,000 in 2023 H2.

Complaints about property insurance dipped slightly in the most recent semester, but have remained consistent over the past four years, declining just 8% over the period to their current count of 92,000 in 2024 H2.

Medical and health complaints, in contrast, have climbed steadily since 2020, seeing a 27% rise from 61,000 to 77,000 complaints.

Travel insurance disputes have fallen markedly over the past four years, largely due to the inflated number of Covid-19 related complaints seen at the beginning of the period. After bottoming out in 2021 H2, complaints once again rose and stabilised around their current count of 29,000 per semester.

Pet insurance has seen a consistent climb in complaints in the recent past, reaching 28,000 complaints lodged in the second half of 2024, up from 22,000 four years ago.

Assistance insurance – which focuses on providing mitigating services in the event of a claim rather than a monetary payout – has seen a decrease in complaints, down from 28,000 to 20,000 over the four year period.

Dispute provisions

The FCA data also revealed the amount money insurance firms had to set aside in order to service upheld disputes, also known as the dispute provision.

In 2024 H2, the line with the largest relative provision was travel insurance, with £884 per complaint earmarked for potential payouts, followed by other general insurance complaints at £600 and property insurance disputes at £407.

Assistance insurance (£366), motor and transport insurance (£263), pet insurance (£174) and medical and health insurance (£132) had considerably lower provisions per complaint.

Falling redress payments

Overall, the total redress paid per upheld complaint in the insurance and pure protection industry has seen a marked drop in the past four years.

In 2020 H2, average redress per claim sat at £1,430, with a total of £2.516bn paid out across 1,758,000 claims – largely driven by voluminous and expensive claims regarding missold payment protection insurance (PPI).

By 2021 H2, and with the tail end of PIP claims paid, this number had fallen dramatically to £193 paid per upheld dispute, or £97m paid out across 505,000 upheld claims.

Since then, the payment ratio has been largely static, most recently sitting at £123 paid per upheld claim.