Disputes lodged with the Financial Ombudsman Service (FOS) reached a record level after increasing by 16% over the past 12 months but disputes regarding life insurance remain relatively low.<\/p>\n
FOS stated it received 39,479 disputes in the last financial year, up from 34,095 in 2016, driven by a continued growth in general insurance disputes.<\/p>\n
Of the disputes received 22,475 were accepted and of those only 4%, or 1,018 disputes, were related to life insurance, a decrease of 7% on the previous year\u2019s number of 1,095 disputes.<\/p>\n
The Service released the statistics as part of its Annual Review, which also shows that life insurance advice related disputes have continued to remain low accounting for less than 10% of life insurance related disputes.<\/p>\n
FOS separated life insurance disputes into income stream and non-income stream products and then further sorted the disputes into sales and service channels.<\/p>\n
The service said that for the 533 disputes for income stream products, life insurance advice related disputes accounted for only 7%, or 37, of all disputes, while complaints about life insurers accounted for 71%, or 378, of all disputes.<\/p>\n
For the 424 disputes received about non-income stream products, complaints about financial advice accounted for 8%, or 34, of all disputes while complaints about life insurers accounted for 68%, or 288, of all disputes.<\/p>\n