Former specialist lenders come out top for mortgage complaints
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Former specialist lenders fared badly in the Financial Ombudsman Service’s latest mortgage complaint figures.
FOS data includes both the num-ber of complaints received about individual businesses and the per-centage of complaints upheld in favour of consumers.
Bank of Scotland received the highest number of mortgage complaints - 500 in the six months between January and June 2010 - of which only 25% were upheld. But Preferred Mortgages, which no longer offers mortgages, received 38 complaints, 58% of which were upheld.
And former lender Southern Pacific Mortgages Limited received 52 of which 57% were upheld.
Future Mortgages received 28 complaints, of which 55% were justified and Mortgage Express received 78 complaints, of which 35% were upheld.
Kevin Friend, strategic partner-ships director at Mortgages.co.uk, says some of the former specialist lenders are regularly searched for on his firm’s site.
He says: “Consumers are more aware of mis-selling among banks and lenders because of a number of high profile cases. Complaints to FOS about former specialist lenders are from historical transactions that occurred a few years ago.
“Lenders that offered sub-prime and self-cert deals could be more vulnerable to these types of com-plaints because of the type of deals they offered.”
Barclays received the second highest number of mortgage com-plaints at 473, 51% of which were upheld.
Santander UK was in third place with 434 mortgage complaints, of which 29% were upheld.
Northern Rock (Asset Manage-ment) received the fourth largest number of mortgage complaints with 193 - 42% of which were upheld - followed by Cheltenham & Gloucester which received 170 complaints, with 27% upheld.
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