Financial ombudsman Q1 data shows 40% drop in complaints from CMCs, 80% uphold rates for pensions

Data from the first quarter of financial year 2025/26 from the Financial Ombudsman Service (FOS), published on August 7, shows a 40% drop in the number of complaints submitted by claims management companies (CMCs) from 50,900 in Q4 2024/2025 to 30,800 .

The FOS began charging CMCs £250 per claim submitted from April 2025, prompting a surge in complaints in the previous quarter as CMCs rushed to submit them ahead of the new regime. It is likely a substantial proportion of the 30,800 cases recorded as CMC submissions in the first quarter will not incur a £250 fee, however.

The FOS said in a statement accompanying the data that some of the cases recorded as being from the first-quarter of 2025/26 were actually submitted in the previous quarter but only entered into its systems after March 31. A spokesperson said the FOS “could not provide data” on how many of the 30,800 complaints processed in the first quarter of 2025/26 were actually submitted in the fourth quarter of 2024/25 “at this stage”.

The drop in complaints submitted by CMCs reflected the overall fall in the total number of complaints — that is, submitted by both individuals and CMCs — from 87,692 in Q4 2024/2025 to 68,000 in Q1. It suggests that a rebalancing of complaint submissions to the FOS back towards individual consumers might be under way.

In 2022/23 just 18% of complaints to the FOS were made by CMCs, but by last year this had jumped to 50%, mainly comprising complaints about credit affordability and car finance.

Uphold rate outliers

Across the quarter the average uphold rate — where the FOS finds for the complainant — was 31%. However, this headline figure masks a wide disparity in uphold rates across product categories, and complaints about pension and insurance products continue to have high uphold rates.

Complaints about non-standard investments within self-invested personal pensions (SIPPs) had an uphold rate of 83%; while those about standard investment in SIPPs had an uphold rate of 66%. Complaints categorised as about personal pensions had an uphold rate of 51%.

The uphold rate for pet insurance complaints was 49%, on buildings insurance 38%, and for travel insurance 36%. The Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) is currently reviewing general insurance policy documentation after an investigation found that consumers often only realised there were conditions and exclusions attached to their policies when they came to make a claim.

Separately the regulator has said that it expects firms to monitor FOS uphold rates as part of their outcomes monitoring under the Consumer Duty. It updated its best practice guidance on complaints monitoring and root cause analysis in February.

APP fraud

The FOS data records a fall in the number of complaints about authorised push payment (APP) fraud from 4,800 in the first quarter of 2024/25 to 3,400 in the same quarter of 2025/26.

The UK introduced mandatory reimbursement for APP fraud last October. Since then, both the bank or payments firm that sent the money (involved in the APP fraud) and the institution that received the funds have been responsible for refunding the fraud victim on a 50/50 basis.  

In April, Mark Thynne, senior manager for enforcement and compliance monitoring at the Payments Systems Regulator (PSR), said there had been a 40% like-for-like decrease in APP fraud since mandatory reimbursement came in.  

According to the PSRʼs most recent data, 88% of customers who were victims of APP fraud were reimbursed between January and March 2025. Around 3% of APP fraud claims were denied on the grounds that the consumer “was not cautious enough” before authorising a payment.

The FOS said it generally dealt with complaints about more complex APP frauds involving more than one institution.