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LONDON, March 30 (Reuters) - Complaints against Britain'sbanks fell in the second half of last year as fewer peoplelodged objections about insurance protection mis-selling.
Britain's Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) said on Mondaythere were 2.2 million complaints against financial firmsbetween July and December 2014, down 7 percent from the firsthalf of the year and down 12 percent from the second half of2013.
The FCA said Barclays was the most complained aboutfirm, with 276,626 complaints in the second half of the year.
Lloyds Banking Group would have been the mostcomplained about if its Lloyds Bank and Bank of Scotland brandswere added together, with a combined 474,651 complaints.
Royal Bank of Scotland's NatWest and RBS brands hada combined 200,962 complaints.
Those banks all saw a drop in complaints, but there was arise at HSBC to 152,148.
Payment protection insurance (PPI) made up about half of allgrievances, and excluding a drop seen in those numbers,complaints rose by 1 percent from the first half of the year.
That was due to an 8 percent rise in the number ofcomplaints relating to banking and credit cards, the FCA said.
Banks paid out 2.4 billion pounds ($3.6 billion) incompensation to customers in the last six months of the year, upfrom 2.34 billion in the previous six month, with 88 percentrelated to PPI and other insurance and protection products.
PPI mis-selling has become the costliest consumer financescandal ever in Britain, and banks have set aside 24 billionpounds to compensate customers for it.
PPI policies were meant to protect borrowers in the event ofsickness or unemployment but were often sold to those who wouldhave been ineligible to claim.
(For details of the complaints data click here: http://www.fca.org.uk/consumers/complaints-and-compensation/complaints-data)
($1 = 0.6739 pounds) (Reporting by Steve Slater; Editing by Mark Potter)
