30/09/2010

Lloyds Tops Bad Banking Ranking

Lloyds Banking Group has come top of the league for bank complaints, new research reveals.

Findings by the Financial Services Authority (FSA) show almost 290,000 complaints in relation to charges, bad advice, poor service and charges over the past six months.

Barclays clocked up 250,667 complaints while Santander had 244,978 complaints registered.

Royal Bank of Scotland, whose businesses include NatWest and RBS, had 142,688 complaints, while HSBC drew 81,271.

A total of 1.25 million complaints had been registered by bank and building society customers.

Findings are up 5% compared to this time last year.

In a bid to help drive up standards, the authority is proposing changes to its complaints handling rules.

The proposals include making banks identify a senior manager responsible for handling complaints and common problems.

FSA officials also suggest scrapping bank letters that fail to explain that customers can make a challenge to the Financial Ombudsman Service.

The British Bankers' Association commented: "The larger the bank is the more complaints it is statistically likely to receive and, with more than 140 million bank accounts in the UK and billions of transactions a year, there will inevitably be instances when things go wrong."

(BMcN/GK)

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