The UK’s Financial Ombudsman Service (FOS) acts as a middleman to help settle disputes between consumers and UK-based businesses providing financial services, such as banks and insurance companies. Every six months, the FOS publishes its complaints data and, according to the figures released yesterday, there was a sizable increase in the number of complaints in the first six months of 2010.

From January 1 to June 30th of this year, there were 84,212 new complaints made about financial businesses operating in the UK. This is an increase of 2,076 from the last six month period of 2009.

The highest number of complaints in the insurance category were attributed to the following companies:

1. Lloyd’s TSB Bank 8474
2. Barclays Bank 2205
3. Black Horse 1876
4. Welcome Financial Services 1608
5. Bank of Scotland 1548
6. The Royal Bank of Scotland 1499
7. HSBC Bank 1344
8. Clydesdale Bank 1302
9. National Westminster Bank 1027
10. Santander UK Plc 977
11. Capital One Bank 843
12. Eisis 582
13. Aviva 580
14. AXA 532
15. Direct Line 478
16. HFC Bank 463
17. MBNA Europe Bank 457
18. Royal & Sun Alliance 452
19. St Andrew’s Insurance 425
20. UK Insurance 386

The FOS works to resolve every complaint that is filed and, on average, they resolve 70% of all general insurance complaints — complaints which are resolved in favor of the consumer.

The above article is reprinted from the Risk Management Monitor - the official blog of Risk Management magazine. Reprinted with permission from the Risk Management Monitor.