In this period CHL itself received a total of 95 complaints, of which just 5% were upheld in favour of the customer. Of those complaints only two were referred to the Financial Ombudsman Service in the same period, one of which has already been decided in favour of CHL. The remaining case is awaiting a decision.
FOS decisions relating to earlier periods were received on four cases, all being resolved in CHL’s favour.
The buy-to-let lender currently manages over 43,000 live mortgage accounts.
CHL’s data follows the recent publication of complaints data by FOS for individual financial businesses covering the first half of 2012 time period. CHL did not appear in this data as it only includes those businesses where FOS received a total of 30 or more complaints across all product classes.
FOS outlined the number of mortgages and home finance complaints received by all lenders. Bank of Scotland received the highest number of mortgages and home finance complaints at 750, with 28% upheld. The average for all businesses upheld was 25%.
Other lenders’ figures included:
- Nationwide Building Society - 160, with 17% upheld.
- Royal Bank of Scotland – 128, with 24% upheld.
- Mortgage Express - 72, with 20% upheld.
- GE Money - 41, with 27% upheld.
- Bradford & Bingley (UKAR) - 33, with 24% upheld.
- Paratus AMC Ltd - 23, with 29% upheld.
Bob Young, Managing Director at CHL Mortgages, commented:
“As CHL does not appear in the official FOS complaint figures for individual businesses we felt it was important to publish our own data regarding complaint numbers, how many are upheld and how FOS is treating our cases. We are pleased with the comparison with our overall lender peer group particularly those lenders that continue to operate or operated in our sector. Once again it shows the commitment we have to dealing with complaints efficiently and sympathetically. All complaints are seen and reviewed at the highest level at CHL and this means we are able to deliver a strong service in this area and reach a conclusion as quickly as possible.
“Complaints across financial services appear to be on the rise so it is even more important that they are handled correctly and taken seriously. Clearly we work to keep complaints to an absolute minimum but this is proving difficult particularly with the work of claims management companies and the growing trend for spurious complaints. We have certainly seen an increase in, for example, PPI complaints against CHL even though we did not sell PPI to the customer. Unfortunately I suspect this trend will continue at least in the short-term until there is a great clampdown on the practice of generating complaints simply for the sake of it.”
