The Financial Ombudsman Service (FOS) deals with complaints from consumers about a variety of financial products one of which is motor insurance. The FOS has recently produced its annual review that makes for interesting reading.
Apparently, in the year 2017/ 2018 there were 11,887 new motor insurance complaints received whereas in the year 2016/2017 there were 11,844 motor insurance complaints so this is only a small increase. Obviously, it would have been preferable if the number of complaints had fallen.
The proportion of motor insurance complaints that were upheld by the Financial Ombudsman Service in the year 2017/2018 was 28% with this being a slight drop when compared with the year 2016/2017 when 30% of motor insurance complaints were upheld.
In the year 2017/2018, 73% of complaints about motor insurance were resolved within 3 months but in the year 2016/2017 the figures produced show that 83% of motor insurance complaints were resolved within the same period of time.
Whilst no data has been produced about what the motor insurance complaints related to, figures have been provided about all types of insurance complaints excluding PPI and these show that in the year 2017/2018 58% of complaints were about claims, 24% of complaints were about administration, 14% were about sales and advice and other complaints accounted for 3%. In the previous year 2016/2017, 59% of complaints were about claims, 22% were about administration and 19% were about sales and advice.
On the basis that in March 2017 there were around 37.5 million cars registered here in the UK, that would mean that approximately 0.3% of policyholders complained about their motor insurance.
If a high percentage of those complaints do relate to when people make claims then it is perhaps important that when considering which provider to arrange your cover with that you also take into account how good that insurance company is relating to dealing with such complaints and not just focus perhaps on price and the level of cover.
