Complaints to the Financial Services and Pensions Ombudsman jumped 13 per cent last year to a record 7,004, according to a breakdown of grievances published on Wednesday.
The figure is up by a third in just three years.
Cases highlighted in the report include an elderly woman scammed by a fraudster pretending to be her internet service provider, a bank losing title deeds to a customer’s mortgaged property, a redundant worker who was left €28,000 out of pocket because of poor pensions advice, an insurance company that failed to cancel a life insurance policy linked to a mortgage and a mother battling a travel insurance company to recover costs incurred abroad when her child fell ill.
Customer interactions with banks accounted for over half of all complaints the office dealt with last year, according to its overview of complaints. The 3,802 issues arising with banks that landed on its desk was 12 per cent up on 2024.
READ MORE
Almost a third related to the insurance sector, up 18 per cent on 2024. Ombudsman Liam Sloyan said this was a continuation of a trend over recent years, with insurance accounting for a near doubling of complaints over the past three years.
“This level of increase should be of concern to the industry and I will be engaging with the sector,” Sloyan said.
Motor insurance accounted for 45 per cent of complaints in the insurance sector, three times the next category, which was health insurance. Claim handling and the rejection of claims were the key areas where conflict arose.
Investments, with 525 issues raised with the ombudsman, saw the biggest year-on-year increase in percentage terms, up 27 per cent, while the number of issues arising with pensions fell by 11 per cent to 276.
Sloyan said his office had closed more than 6,000 complaints during the year, a record, with consumers receiving payments of €6.17 million. The bulk of that, €4.57 million, was accounted for by way of mediated settlements between the parties.
Just more than 3,100 complaints fell at the first hurdle, almost 1,300 of them because complainants had failed to work through the established complaints systems with companies before going to the ombudsman. A further 877 were deemed to be outside the ombudsman jurisdiction and 830 were either resolved or withdrawn before they were fully assessed.
The report says it is taking, on average, 8.3 months to close complaints.
Customer service was the trigger for the largest single number of complaints, followed closely by disputed transactions (which includes scams and fraud) and maladministration. The report contains a series of case studies highlighting the types of fraud consumers are falling for.
The ombudsman says that although the number of tracker mortgage complaints it receives is falling, it did get another 11 tracker mortgage-related complaints in 2025. Although 143 tracker complaints were closed last year, another 600 remain in the ombudsman’s inbox.
“It is notable that of the 115 tracker mortgage complaints where I issued a legally binding decision, 111 complaints resulted in a decision where I did not uphold the complaint,” Sloyan said.
