Lloyds Bank handles 1.4m complaints over PPI

Nearly 1.4 million complaints were made to Lloyds Banking Group during 2012 about payment protection insurance (PPI), new figures show.

However, Lloyds said that it made “significant progress” in driving complaint numbers down in the second half of last year, when PPI complaints fell back from a peak.

The group dealt with just over half a million PPI complaints for the whole of 2011 but this figure rocketed in the first half of 2012 to more than 727,000.

Lloyds’ latest six-monthly complaints figures, which were published yesterday, showed that PPI complaints fell back by 9 per cent in the second half of last year, with 658,289 cases recorded.

PPI still makes up the lion’s share of complaints dealt with by the group, although the recent fall helped to drive an overall drop in complaints towards the end of the year.

A total of 762,024 complaints was recorded in the second half of 2012, marking an 11 per cent drop compared with the first six months.

Banking complaints, which are also included in this figure, were down by a quarter compared with the first six months of 2012, with 71,258 cases recorded during the second half of the year.

Investments was the only category to see an increase in complaints, although there was a sharp 23 per cent rise compared with the previous six months, with 6,829 complaints recorded in the last half of 2012.

Lloyds was fined £4.3 million earlier this month by the City watchdog after up to 140,000 customers had their PPI compensation payments delayed.

The Financial Services Authority said the group’s PPI redress systems had fallen “way below” expected standards.

The failings related to a period leading up to spring 2012 and Lloyds previously said that it had been surprised by the volume of complaints it had needed to process.