Issues ›
Treatment in financial difficulty
How the firm handled arrears, forbearance, or a customer in hardship.
11,224banking decisions on this issue
25.1%upheld where an outcome is recorded
40firms with 20+ decisions here
Rules the ombudsman applied
Derived from the rules actually cited in these decisions, ranked by how often they appear — not from an editorial view of which rules matter.
FCA CONC (Consumer Credit sourcebook) · cited in 563
Conduct rules for consumer credit, including affordability and arrears handling.
Consumer Credit Act 1974 · cited in 519
Consumer credit rights, including Section 75 joint liability for card purchases.
FCA DISP (Dispute Resolution) · cited in 157
How firms must handle complaints and how the Ombudsman decides them.
Equality Act 2010 · cited in 85
Duties toward customers with protected characteristics, including reasonable adjustments.
FCA Consumer Duty (PRIN 2A) · cited in 75
Requires firms to deliver good outcomes for retail customers.
Financial Services and Markets Act 2000 · cited in 30
The statute that creates the FCA and the Financial Ombudsman Service.
Which firms lose on this
Firms with fewer than 20 decisions on this issue are excluded — the rate would not mean anything.
In the ombudsman’s words
Mr T is experiencing a period of financial hardship
Lenders must treat those in financial difficulties fairly.
It has now agreed to enter into a repayment plan with Mr H
when she was having financial difficulties
Quotes are shown only where the exact wording was verified against the decision text.
The US counterpart
The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) runs a separate complaint database for American consumers. We map its issue labels onto this issue ourselves — the CFPB does not — and the two datasets are not comparable: UK figures above are ombudsman decisions with an adjudicated outcome, while these are complaints made to a US regulator, most of which are never adjudicated. A count of one is not a count of the other, so no rate, percentage or ratio is calculated between them.
The CFPB recorded 31,312 complaints mapped to this issue, received between May 2018 and October 2026, across all US consumer financial products.
Most common CFPB issue labels within this mapping:
Struggling to pay mortgage — 14,328 complaints
Struggling to pay your loan — 8,339 complaints
Took or threatened to take negative or legal action — 8,043 complaints
Struggling to pay your bill — 602 complaints
Source: CFPB Consumer Complaint Database, not scoped to banking — the CFPB’s complaint categories span all consumer financial products, not just banking.