Protection complaints exceed 2011 levels

Protection complaints continued to rise during the year and have already breached last year’s totals in some product areas.

However consumer health and protection insurance grievances are less likely to be upheld, according to data revealed by the Financial Ombudsman Service (FOS).

Overall, health and protection insurance complaints still produce a fraction of the 55,907 cases the FOS dealt with between October and December.

Figures to the end of the third quarter of 2011/12 show that complaints about whole of life (WoL) and critical illness (CI) policies have already surpassed last year's totals, while income protection (IP) and term assurance are also on the brink of doing so.

Only private medical and dental insurance and business protection product complaints appear likely to remain steady or drop slightly over this year.

After the three months to December, 1,508 complaints had been made about WoL (compared to 1,444 in total during 2010/11), 559 about CI (528), 890 for term assurance (926) and 617 regarding IP (702).

The rise continued the trend set earlier in the year and is in contrast to the fall in 2010/11.

Encouragingly for the health insurance industry, FOS upheld rates over the third quarter dropped to 41% after hitting 49% and 53% in the first two quarters of the year (50% overall in 2010/11).

This notable decline has also occurred with IP upheld rates dropping to 33% (41% Q1, 45% Q2, 42% 2010/11) and CI to 27% (from 36% Q1, 33% Q2, 31% 2010/11).

Other product areas remained largely steady in this regard.

Payment protection insurance (PPI) continued to dominate the FOS caseload, producing 30,301 new grievances in Q3, followed by credit cards (4,032), current accounts (3,421) and mortgages (2,383).