As part of the FSA's wider commitment to publishing more information about firms and industry sectors, this data covers:
the volume of complaints firms have received, by product type and cause of the complaint, e.g. delays and misleading advice; and
how firms have handled complaints, including the speed of complaints-handling and the proportion of complaints that have been upheld by firms.
The data published today covers 2006-2008 and indicates that the overall number of complaints has increased by 5.7% over this period. The speed of firms' complaints handling and the proportion of complaints upheld by firms remained fairly stable over the period - at the end of 2008 - 10% of complaints took longer than eight weeks to resolve and 40% of complaints were decided in customers' favour.
Dan Waters, the FSA's director of retail policy and conduct risk, said: "Transparency is an important regulatory tool. Publishing this information will mean that consumers and firms can now see how many complaints the industry receives and how it deals with them. This is stage one of our drive to say more about how the industry handles complaints and builds on our recent proposals, currently out for consultation, about the publication of firm-specific data.
"We expect firms to treat customers fairly by dealing with complaints promptly and efficiently. We are focusing even more attention, particularly through intensive supervision, on ensuring that firms are dealing with complaints properly."
The FSA plans to publish aggregate data covering the first half of 2009 in October, and will then publish updates every six months after that.
This industry-level information complements the FSA's proposals to publish firm-specific complaints data, set out in July, which would enable people to see how individual firms are handling complaints.
Maggie Craig, the Association of British Insurance (ABI's) Director of Consumer Strategy, said: "The ABI's member companies understand that consumers need meaningful information to help them make effective financial choices. How complaints are handled is part of this.
"But we need to show this in context, and in a way that gives meaningful information to consumers. It's important that any published data is clear, fair and not misleading. The FSA's aggregate data does not reflect the fact that there are 160 million general insurance and 82 million life insurance policies in force - overall, that's just 1 complaint for every 1,200 policies during the second half of 2008. However, the insurance industry acknowledges that more work needs to be done to improve performance, and the ABI is leading the way on initiatives to achieve this.
"The current format to be used by the FOS, and later the FSA, for publishing company-specific data, will not help consumers because it doesn't allow them to compare the performance of different companies for specific products, such as motor or home insurance, on a like for like basis. Without this level of detail, the published data will be of no real help to consumers and, without the right context, we remain very concerned that it might even be misleading."
