LONDON, Aug 25 (Reuters) - Complaints about Britain'sfinancial firms rose eight percent in the first half of thisyear after a jump in new cases about packaged bank accounts, theindustry's watchdog said on Tuesday.
Packaged bank accounts offer a range of additional services-- such as insurance policies, better deals on savings accountsor loans, and other perks in exchange for a monthly fee.
Three major banks -- Royal Bank of Scotland,Barclays and Lloyds -- have set aside 732 millionpounds ($1.16 billion) between them to compensate customers forpossible mis-sold packaged accounts, raising concern it couldbuild into another big compensation problem for the industry.
New complaints about payment protection insurance (PPI)products in the six months to the end of June totalled 94,091,down 10 percent from the previous six months but stillaccounting for 55 percent of all cases, the Financial OmbudsmanService said.
There was a 45 percent jump in the number of complaintsabout financial products other than PPI, mainly due to morecomplaints about packaged bank account brought by claimsmanagement companies, the ombudsman said.
That took total new complaints in the six months to 173,994,up from 161,649 in the July-December 2014 period.
Some 57 percent of complaints were upheld in the consumer'sfavour, the ombudsman said.
Banks have set aside more than 28 billion pounds incompensation for PPI mis-selling, including 13.4 billion byLloyds Banking Group alone, making it by far thecostliest scandal to hit the industry. The number of claims isslowing, but not as fast as banks had expected.
Firms that were set up to claim and process PPI cases havenow switched to claiming on packaged accounts.($1 = 0.6338 pounds) (Reporting by Steve Slater; Editing by Keith Weir)