Bank of Scotland has been hit by over 600 new mortgage and home finance complaints in the second half of last year, the highest of all financial institutions monitored.
According to the latest data from the Financial Ombudsman Service (FOS), Bank of Scotland, part of the Lloyds Banking Group, received 638 new complaints regarding mortgages and home finance between 1st July and 31st December 2015.
The figure was down on the 1,004 mortgage and home finance complaints Bank of Scotland registered in the same period the year before, when it also topped the complaints table.
Bank of Scotland managed to resolve 26% of complaints in H2 2015, which was below the FOS average of 37%.
The complaints also included those relating to Halifax, which is included under the Bank of Scotland license, and of those, 74% were resolved.
Jen Tippin, Customer Service Director a Lloyds Banking Group, said improving the customer experience and quickly putting things right when they went wrong were key priorities for the lender.
“We are encouraged that, excluding the legacy issue of PPI, the group has seen a reduction in the number of complaints being referred to the Financial Ombudsman Service. And that on those cases, the FOS find in our favour over 85% of the time,” said Jen.
“More generally, excluding PPI, we now resolve over 70% of complaints within 48 hours of receipt as we work hard to address the root cause of customer’s dissatisfaction.”
Overall, the FOS took on a total of 164,347 new cases in the second half of 2015, which was a 6% decrease on the first half of the year.
Caroline Wayman, Chief Ombudsman, said: “The financial services sector has been through a challenging and volatile period in the eight years since the ombudsman first began to publish data about individual financial businesses.
“Though it still makes sense to plan for uncertainty and change ahead, the signs are that complaints are now broadly levelling off as we move onto a more even keel in the coming year.
“I believe it’s important that we continue to find new ways to work so we can resolve complaints quickly, while sharing our knowledge so businesses can avoid the ‘big claims issues’ of the past.”