The FSA review looked at several banking groups responsible for over 70% of the complaints firms receive and report to the FSA and over 60% of those resolved by the Financial Ombudsman Service (FOS).

There appears to be have been a failure of banks to learn from previous complaints and to make changes to prevent similar complaints arising in the future.

The FSA found poor standards of complaint handling within most of the banks assessed, including, a lack of senior management engagement and accountability for the delivery of fair complaint handling; Poorly designed staff incentive schemes that made branch staff reluctant to pay redress to customers, even in situations where the bank was at fault; Poor quality complaint handling by staff in branches and general call-centres leading to inadequate investigations, poor decision making as to the outcome of the complaint and unsatisfactory correspondence with customers and complaint handling procedures that led to staff issuing multiple, repetitive responses to customers, forcing them to restate their complaint a number of times in the face of ongoing negative responses from the bank.

“A culture of fair complaint handling is an important indicator of whether a firm is committed to treating its customers fairly,” said Dan Waters, the FSA’s director of conduct risk.

“It is vital that customers know that if something goes wrong, their complaint will be deal with in a reasonable way and that they will get a fair outcome.”Source: paydaybank.co.uk/news/