Data published by the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) has shown a 15% fall in UK consumers’ complaints against financial services firms.
The data relates to the last six months of 2013 and shows that there was a fall in complaints of 15% compared to the previous six months, from 2,911,154 to 2,479,029.
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Martin Wheatley, FCA chief executive, said: "This is an indication that firms seem to be putting customers at the heart of their business, however, there is clearly more for us all to do to show consumers their interests come first."
The most complained about firms were Barclays – accounting for 12.5% of the complaints opened during the six months, Lloyds – accounting for 10.4% and MBNA, which accounted for 8.6% of complaints.
Wheatley said: "No firm wants to top this particular list and they all should be striving to ensure that customers are being treated fairly and not given cause to complain."
PPI complaints fell by 22% from the first half of 2013 but PPI complaints alone still comprised over half of all complaints at 56%, down from 62% on the previous six months.
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By GlobalDataPaul Clark, CEO of Charter UK, a complaints management software provider, said: "We have long been saying that PPI was skewing the figures and hiding the real progress that banks have been making to take customer feedback into the heart of their business and drive service improvements accordingly.
"Now that the dead hand of PPI is fading, we can now see clear evidence of the banks’ drive to win back consumer trust."
In terms of other banking products, complaints about current accounts, savings accounts and credit cards, fell by 3% to 558,991. This represented a 23% decrease since the second half of 2012 and is at the lowest half-yearly number of such complaints since H2 2006.
Complaints about unregulated loans fell by 8%, credit card complaints dropped by 14% and savings and other banking products down by 16%. There was, however, a rise in the number of complaints about current accounts which increased by 8%.
The total amount of compensation paid as a result of complaints was £2.65bn, an increase from £2.55bn in the first half of the year.
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