Year analysis

2025 complaint and ombudsman analysis

Detailed public analysis of the 2025 published Financial Ombudsman decision set, including complaint volume, outcome mix, product concentration, firm exposure, and recurring complaint themes.

Page summary

31,770 published FOS decisions in 2025, including upheld-rate context, top firms, top products, recurring complaint themes, and representative cases.

Published decisions

31,770

2025 decision volume in the public corpus

Upheld rate

31.3%

9,951 upheld decisions

Latest published decision 31 Dec 2025

Published decisions

31,770

2025 decision volume in the public corpus

Upheld rate

31.3%

9,951 upheld decisions

Leading product

Banking and Payments

43.8% of annual decisions

Leading firm

Revolut Ltd

1,725 published decisions

What stood out in 2025

31,770 published ombudsman decisions landed in 2025. 31.3% of those decisions were upheld, while 68.7% were not upheld. That makes 2025 a meaningful benchmark year for understanding where complaint pressure and adjudication risk sat across the corpus.

Banking and Payments was the heaviest product area, accounting for 13,903 decisions. Revolut Ltd appeared most often at firm level. The most frequently tagged complaint theme was fraud or scam concern.

  • Banking and Payments: 13,903 decisions
  • Revolut Ltd: 1,725 decisions
  • Fraud Or Scam Concern: 6,234 tagged decisions
  • 2025 versus 2024: up 15.0% year on year

Product mix and concentration

The year was led by Banking and Payments, Insurance, Consumer Credit, and others, which together represented the centre of complaint activity in the published decisions for 2025.

Banking and Payments alone contributed 43.8% of all decisions published in 2025, which makes it the clearest lens for understanding how complaint pressure expressed itself that year.

  • Banking and Payments: 13,903 decisions, 24.7% upheld
  • Insurance: 8,040 decisions, 39.0% upheld
  • Consumer Credit: 6,201 decisions, 32.5% upheld
  • Pensions and Annuities: 1,414 decisions, 45.4% upheld
  • Mortgages: 1,203 decisions, 32.4% upheld

Firm and complaint-theme signals

Revolut Ltd, Barclays Bank UK PLC, Santander UK Plc, and others were the most visible firms in the published decisions for 2025. That does not prove complaint prevalence in a consumer-market sense, but it does show which firms were most exposed in the final ombudsman decisions dataset.

Complaint-theme tagging pointed most strongly to fraud or scam concern, delay in claim handling, affordability assessment failure, and others. These themes are the most useful public proxy for “complaint type” in this corpus because the raw decisions are not stored with a dedicated complaint-type field.

  • Most frequent precedent signal: Consumer Credit Act 1974
  • Second precedent signal: Section 140a Cca
  • Primary complaint theme: Fraud Or Scam Concern

Representative cases

Recent published decisions in this slice

5 examples shown

DRN-598827831 Dec 2025Upheld

Chaucer Insurance Company Designated Activity Company · Insurance

My final decision is that I uphold this complaint and I direct Chaucer Insurance Company Designated Activity Company to put things right as I’ve set out above. Under the rules of the Financial Ombudsman Service, I’m required to ask Mr K and Mrs K to accept or reject my decision before 28 January 2026.

View source decision
DRN-462522130 Dec 2025Not upheld

Mitsubishi HC Capital UK Plc · Consumer Credit

DRN-4625221 The complaint Mr D’s complaint is, in essence, that Mitsubishi HC Capital UK PLC (the ‘Lender’) acted unfairly and unreasonably by (1) being party to an unfair credit relationship with him under Section 140A of the Consumer Credit Act 1974 (as amended) (the ‘CCA’), and (2) d... (8 pages)

View source decision
DRN-531463730 Dec 2025Not upheld

Prepay Technologies Ltd · Banking and Payments

DRN-5314637 The complaint P, a company, complains that Prepay Technologies Ltd (‘Prepay’) won’t refund payments that happened as part of a scam. Mr L, a director of P, brings the complaint on P’s behalf. What happened The details of this complaint are well known to both parties, so I’ll... (3 pages)

View source decision
DRN-546939430 Dec 2025Upheld

Monzo Bank Ltd · Banking and Payments

DRN-5469394 The complaint Mr A complains that Monzo Bank Ltd won’t refund him the money he lost after he fell victim to an Authorised Push Payment (APP) scam. In bringing his complaint to this service Mr A is represented, but for ease of reading I will refer to Mr A throughout this dec... (4 pages)

View source decision
DRN-549138430 Dec 2025Not upheld

TSB Bank plc · Banking and Payments

DRN-5491384 The complaint Mr M complains that TSB Bank plc blocked his account. Mr M is also unhappy about the service TSB provided. What happened The background to this complaint is well known to both parties, so I will just outline key events here. Mr M has an account with TSB. On 1... (5 pages)

View source decision