The financial ombudsman in the UK has published some detailed figures about complaints made against financial institutions – and the outcome of those complaints. For the first time they have also published the names of the institutions involved – something the Irish Financial Ombudsman does not yet do .
Here are some figures from the UK on 2008/2009 complaints made about some UK companies with Irish connections or operating in Ireland . These figures may be of interest in the absence of similar figures from our financial ombudsman. Tesco and Northern Rock didn’t come out too well while Halifax Insurance had the least complaints upheld. (NB: These figures are nothing to do with their Irish operations – just the UK based ones)
Tesco Personal Finance 267 new cases 78% upheld
Northern Rock 593 new cases 78% upheld
Ulster Bank 67 new cases 76% upheld
Bank of Ireland 336 new cases 62% upheld
AIB Group UK 90 new cases 51% upheld
Quinn Insurance 67 new cases 45% upheld
Royal & Sun Alliance 372 new cases 36% upheld
Allianz Insurance 200 new cases 34% upheld
Halifax Insurance Ireland 74 new cases 27% upheld
There were a totalof 789877 initial enquiries made to the UK ombudsman which led to 127471 full blown cases.
The Irish Financial ombudsman had 3876 complaints in the first 6 months of 2009 – which equates to 7752 a year.
This is about 6 % of the UK ombudsman complaints figure – which is broadly in line with the population differences between the UK and Ireland.