Bank Complaints Statistics

GeoffTF

I read a recent article about bank complaints which suggested that the smaller banks had a disproportionately large number of Ombudsman complaints:

https://www.thisismoney.co.uk/money/saving/article-14683379/Complaints-banks-soared-76-past-year-one-reported.html

I had a look at the official statistics for Santander banking and credit card complaints:

https://www.santander.co.uk/personal/support/customer-support/complaints-data

That looks clear enough. The first column of the table "Provision (at reporting period end date)" says that Santander had 2.5 complaints per 1,000 customers. The table also says that 60,720 complaints were opened and 49% were upheld. (The number of complaints going to the Ombudsman are smaller, as we would expect, and the time periods or not the same.) I then had look at Barclays, which is a much bigger bank:

https://home.barclays/sustainability/esg-resource-hub/reporting-and-disclosures/uk-complaints-data/July-to-December-2024/

The first column of the table "Provision (at reporting period end date)" says 1.71, which is slightly less than for Santander. I assume that is 1.71 complaints per 1,000 customers, but it does not say so. The table also says that 62,061 complaints were opened (marginally less than for Santander, which is much smaller) and that 66% were upheld. These numbers do not appear to make sense.

What am I missing?

Ergates

GeoffTF said:

I assume that is 1.71 complaints per 1,000 customers, but it does not say so.

From the page in question:   "...included the number of complaints we received per 1,000 accounts for each of the six categories in the first column of...."


Which bit doesn't make sense?

The Santander figures suggest they have around 24 million "Banking & Credit Cards" customers.
The Barclays figures suggest they have around 39 million "Banking and Credit Cards" customers.

Santander has a higher rate of complaints and has a lower rate that were upheld in favour of the customer.  This would suggest they have a higher rate going to the FOS.

GeoffTF

I skipped over the description of the Barclays table too quickly. The relevant part is:

"The complaints data is segmented across the six FCA product categories. The FCA also require firms to quote the complaint volumes in the context of the number of accounts, so we have included the number of complaints we received per 1,000 accounts for each of the six categories in the first column of each table (labelled ‘Provision’). Barclays Bank UK PLC has 37 million accounts and Barclays Bank PLC has over 1.3 million accounts within the Banking category. This includes all current and savings accounts, as well as credit cards."

The Provision column is indeed per thousand customers, as expected. The numbers in the table imply that Santander has 24 million Banking and Credit Cards customers, and Barclays has 36 million. The explanation seems the be that Santander does not have vastly less Banking and Credit Cards customers than Barclays.

The numbers imply that (in round numbers) the average Santander Banking and Credit Cards customer will make a complaint every 200 years, and will make a complaint that is not upheld every 400 years. The average Barclays Banking and Credit Cards customer will make a complaint every 300 years, and will make a complaint that is not upheld every 800 years. The two banks may have significantly different populations of customers, but Barclays seems to do better here. I do not think there is cause to lose any sleep with either bank though.

Nasqueron

Figures like these are always distorted by the serial complainers and people who try and use complaints and FOS threats to get free stuff. For a bank where it's a matter of interpretation, an upheld complaint and "go away" payment of £25-£100 is far cheaper than investigating or having an FOS case. 

Ergates

"Barclays Bank UK PLC has 37 million accounts and Barclays Bank PLC has over 1.3 million"

You need to add the counts for the two orgs together - as they're reported jointly.   About 38.3 Million in total (very close to the 39 million I calculated).

"All a I found was that Santander has 14 million customers. The numbers in the table imply that it has 24 million."

Given the reverse engineered number for Barclays was pretty much spot on, I'd go with the reverse engineered number for Santander too.   Maybe the 14 million is current account customers and there's another 10 million credit card customers (though that seems a lot).   Or maybe it's just a wildly inaccurate guess someone made.

GeoffTF

Ergates said:

"Barclays Bank UK PLC has 37 million accounts and Barclays Bank PLC has over 1.3 million"

You need to add the counts for the two orgs together - as they're reported jointly.   About 38.3 Million in total (very close to the 39 million I calculated).

"All a I found was that Santander has 14 million customers. The numbers in the table imply that it has 24 million."

Given the reverse engineered number for Barclays was pretty much spot on, I'd go with the reverse engineered number for Santander too.   Maybe the 14 million is current account customers and there's another 10 million credit card customers (though that seems a lot).   Or maybe it's just a wildly inaccurate guess someone made.

I had already spotted that and corrected my post. The article linked above gives a false impression of the relative number of Barclays Banking and Credit card customers.

Ergates

GeoffTF said:

Ergates said:

"Barclays Bank UK PLC has 37 million accounts and Barclays Bank PLC has over 1.3 million"

You need to add the counts for the two orgs together - as they're reported jointly.   About 38.3 Million in total (very close to the 39 million I calculated).

"All a I found was that Santander has 14 million customers. The numbers in the table imply that it has 24 million."

Given the reverse engineered number for Barclays was pretty much spot on, I'd go with the reverse engineered number for Santander too.   Maybe the 14 million is current account customers and there's another 10 million credit card customers (though that seems a lot).   Or maybe it's just a wildly inaccurate guess someone made.

I had already spotted that and corrected my post. The article linked above gives a false impression of the relative number of Barclays Banking and Credit card customers.

It's not a whole order of magnitude difference, but it's still 15 million more customers - which is bigger than some some whole banks.

GeoffTF

Ergates said:

GeoffTF said:

Ergates said:

"Barclays Bank UK PLC has 37 million accounts and Barclays Bank PLC has over 1.3 million"

You need to add the counts for the two orgs together - as they're reported jointly.   About 38.3 Million in total (very close to the 39 million I calculated).

"All a I found was that Santander has 14 million customers. The numbers in the table imply that it has 24 million."

Given the reverse engineered number for Barclays was pretty much spot on, I'd go with the reverse engineered number for Santander too.   Maybe the 14 million is current account customers and there's another 10 million credit card customers (though that seems a lot).   Or maybe it's just a wildly inaccurate guess someone made.

I had already spotted that and corrected my post. The article linked above gives a false impression of the relative number of Barclays Banking and Credit card customers.

It's not a whole order of magnitude difference, but it's still 15 million more customers - which is bigger than some some whole banks.

Barclays is a bit bigger than Santander, but its rate of complaints is a bit lower. The two factors roughly cancel out to give almost the same number of complaints, which surprised me after reading about how "huge" Barclays was in relation to other banks. Some of the small banks do worse than Santander. Here are the numbers for the well regarded Starling for example:

https://www.starlingbank.com/current-account/service-information/complaints/

Nonetheless, the average customer will hit a problem on average once in every 100 years.

Ergates

GeoffTF said:

Ergates said:

GeoffTF said:

Ergates said:

"Barclays Bank UK PLC has 37 million accounts and Barclays Bank PLC has over 1.3 million"

You need to add the counts for the two orgs together - as they're reported jointly.   About 38.3 Million in total (very close to the 39 million I calculated).

"All a I found was that Santander has 14 million customers. The numbers in the table imply that it has 24 million."

Given the reverse engineered number for Barclays was pretty much spot on, I'd go with the reverse engineered number for Santander too.   Maybe the 14 million is current account customers and there's another 10 million credit card customers (though that seems a lot).   Or maybe it's just a wildly inaccurate guess someone made.

I had already spotted that and corrected my post. The article linked above gives a false impression of the relative number of Barclays Banking and Credit card customers.

It's not a whole order of magnitude difference, but it's still 15 million more customers - which is bigger than some some whole banks.

Barclays is a bit bigger than Santander, but its rate of complaints is a bit lower. The two factors roughly cancel out to give almost the same number of complaints, which surprised me after reading about how "huge" Barclays was in relation to other banks. Some of the small banks do worse than Santander. Here are the numbers for the well regarded Starling for example:

https://www.starlingbank.com/current-account/service-information/complaints/

Nonetheless, the average customer will hit a problem on average once in every 200 years.

Santander is still pretty big.   Some of the banks listed as the worst offenders in the article - I'd never even heard of them, I'm assuming those are the point of reference for Barclay's being huge.

An elephant is huge when compared to a mouse, but merely big when compared to a Rhino.   Or something like that.