AXA ahead of RSA and Aviva for most complaints in 2012

AXA came ahead of RSA and Aviva for general insurance complaints in 2012, according to the latest Financial Ombudsman Service (FOS) figures.

The insurer racked up 557 new general insurance complaints - excluding payment protection insurance (PPI) - for the first six months to 30 June 2012.

Aviva was in third place with 435 complaints, and RSA fourth at 412. AXA has a smaller general insurance premium book in the UK than Aviva and RSA, and the number of complaints to the FOS may therefore cause the company some concern.

Ageas was in seventh place with 356 complaints while Co-operative Insurance Society chalked up 241 unhappy customers.

The biggest overall offender was UK Insurance Ltd, better known as Direct Line Group (DLG), with 1,541 complaints.

The FOS did not break down the complaints for each of DLG’s individual brands, which include Direct Line, Churchill and Privilege. The group is the largest personal lines insurer in the UK.

As well as publishing new complaints data, the FOS released information on the percentage of complaints that were upheld in the consumers’ favour.

These results reported that only 45% of AXA’s general insurance cases were settled in the customers’ favour, compared with a 51%
average across all FOS-monitored financial firms.

Aviva had 41% of its complaints upheld, RSA had 43%, Ageas had 41%, UK Insurance had 54%, but Co-operative Insurance Society had no results published.

The firm with the most complaints upheld against it was BISL Ltd, which trades as Budget, Bennetts, Junction and Dial Direct, among others.

The bulk of the FOS’s work comes from PPI complaints, which made up 60% of its new cases, according to the watchdog’s last annual review for the period between 1 April 2011 and 31 March 2012.

The FOS also found that 26.5% of non-PPI general insurance complaints in the period were about motor insurance, and that these rose to 7,264 from 5,784 the year before.