subject: Lloyds Group receive 2,000 complaints a day [print this page] Lloyds Group receive 2,000 complaints a day
Lloyds Group receive 2,000 complaints a day
UK home mortgages lender, Lloyds Banking Group, has announced that it received a staggering 2,000 complaints every day from its customers in last 6 months of 2010. This is a 14% increase. The banking group, trading under well known brands such as Lloyds TSB, Bank of Scotland, Scottish Widows and Halifax holds 30million accounts. It dealt internally with many of the complaints but 329,761 customers still remained dissatisfied and took up complaints to the Ombudsman. In total, the Ombudsman dealt with 618,478 complaints in 2010 made against the group.
It would appear that the vast majority of the claims were around Payment Protection Insurance (PPI) mis-selling claims, which rose 70%. The sharp rise in claims was driven by complaints handling companies using template letters.
Lloyds Banking Group, accept they "have responsibility for improving the customer complaints experience" The main areas of complaint stemmed from customers being dissatisfied with the length of time it takes to resolve complaints and the view that the group is not taking sufficient ownership of them.
Lloyds indicated they "are committed to getting this right."
Nationwide is the only other group to make public its complaints data so far this year, revealing a fall to 43,363 for the second half of 2010.
Last September, Santander had the worst figures with 8 complaints per 1000 accounts. Barclays was next with 5.2, while Lloyds had 2.4. Nationwide had one for every 1,000 customers.
The British Bankers' Association, has continuously lobbied against proposed changes to payment protection insurance regulatory practices, which seek to apply new standards to past sales. It is feared this will open the floodgates to a barrage of mis-selling claims.
The whole PPI industry could face a potential bill of up to 1.3bn over the next 5 years to settle complaints if the regulator pushes ahead with its proposed reform.
