Barclays Bank Leads UK Financial Firms in Complaints
Barclays Bank received the most complaints in the first half of 2016 of all financial services firm, according to latest figures from the UK financial regulator.
The Financial Conduct Authority said that between January and June Barclays complaints increased 3% from the second half of 2015, reaching 287,463.
HSBC was the only other big five High Street banks to see complaints increase. HSBC’s complaints also rose 3% to 124,891. Lloyds Bank, however, saw complaints decrease 7% to 213, 163, remaining second to Barclays.
Barclays has taken steps to improve customer service, the banks says, like the introduction of voice security technology.
“We want everyone to have a brilliant customer experience with Barclays and will not stop until we achieve this,” said Matt Hammerstein, head of client and customer experience for Barclays. “We are listening to feedback so we can fix the things that aren’t working and exceed what our customers expect from their bank.”
59% of the complaints were in relation to advising, selling or arranging products. 27% were admin or customer service related.
Barclays and blockchain consortium R3 trialed Corda, a distributed ledger platform, earlier this year. Demoed at the Barclays Accelerator in London, the UK banking giant – which provides banking services to blockchain payments Circle – also tested a private version of Ethereum with 11 R3 member banks. Corda might allow financial firms and regulators to view a common distributed ledger database with more permissions than are available on the Bitcoin blockchain.
The reports of complaint come after “front-line” foreign-exchange market traders were “sacrificed to satisfy regulators and save the reputation of senior executives,” according to a Bloomberg source.
“The bank let me down entirely and I have been thrown to the wolves,” said former trader Mark Clark, who is suing the bank for unfair dismissal, said in his statement. “I was dismissed for behavior that was standard practice in the global FX market.”
Featured image from Shutterstock.
