Santander responds as complaints fall 31%

Santander slashed customer complaints by almost a third in the first half of 2011, after coming in for heavy criticism of its service standards last year.

The number of complaints about the UK operations of the Spanish bank in the six months to the end of June was down 31 per cent on the same period last year and 14 per cent lower than in the second half of 2010. Complaints about banking were down 36 per cent year on year, it has revealed.

The improvement brought down the total number of complaints it reported to the Financial Services Authority (FSA) by 75,000 to 168,888, on last year.

The reduction was due partly to its non-participation in the industry’s legal challenge against new rules governing payment protection insurance (PPI) complaints. Its decision last November continued to process PPI complaints while others put them on hold pending the challenge – which ended in May – meant it dealt with more complaints at the end of last year than other major banks.

Steve Williams, director of service quality at Santander, said: “The 36 per cent reduction in the number of banking complaints reported to the FSA versus the same period last year is the result of intense focus at Santander UK and marks an improvement in the levels of service we provide to our customers.”

He added that the bank hopes to reduce complaint levels further through initiatives such as returning its overseas retail banking call centres to the UK.