The Financial Ombudsman Services (FOS) recorded 271,468 new complaints in the 12 months to 31 March 2020, a drop of 30% compared with the year to the end of March 2019.
It will come as little surprise that a considerable share of the complaints revolved around payment protection insurance (PPI).
However, as the deadline for claims was 29 August 2019, there was a 32% drop in the number of cases last year; falling to 122,153 from 180,507 a year ago.
Investment-linked products
The FOS breaks complaints down into categories and sub-categories.
Under Investments and Pensions, the ombudsman recorded 10,920 new complaints – a drop of 29% from 15,484 last year.
This was driven by substantial falls in 13 of the 15 investment-linked products subcategories.
The two that recorded increases were film partnerships (+93% to 27) and investment-based crowdfunding (+10% to 86).
Pensions
There were 5,528 complaints relating to retirement products, a drop of 26% from nearly 7,500 the year before.
Self-invested personal pensions (Sipps) recorded a 32% decrease to 2,606 complaints.
In fact, year-on-year falls were recorded across 10 of the all 11 pension subcategories – the lone exception being executive pension plans, which saw a 9% rise to 12.
Annuity complaints, meanwhile, were down 9% to 522.
Upheld
Sipps recorded one of the biggest uphold rates across all complaint categories.
Of those resolved during 2019/20, half (52%) were concluded in favour of the complainant.
This is, however, down from an uphold rate of 61% the year before.
