Issues ›
Product mis-sold
Product sold that was unsuitable, or sold on an incorrect basis.
23,873banking decisions on this issue
23.6%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.
Consumer Credit Act 1974 · cited in 7,022
Consumer credit rights, including Section 75 joint liability for card purchases.
FCA DISP (Dispute Resolution) · cited in 3,033
How firms must handle complaints and how the Ombudsman decides them.
FCA CONC (Consumer Credit sourcebook) · cited in 1,382
Conduct rules for consumer credit, including affordability and arrears handling.
Financial Services and Markets Act 2000 · cited in 234
The statute that creates the FCA and the Financial Ombudsman Service.
FCA Consumer Duty (PRIN 2A) · cited in 74
Requires firms to deliver good outcomes for retail customers.
Equality Act 2010 · cited in 31
Duties toward customers with protected characteristics, including reasonable adjustments.
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
But I don’t find that Vanquis mis-sold the ROP or that Mrs W didn’t agree to have it.
Ms L has complained that Barclays Bank Plc (“Barclays”) mis-sold her a Graduate Additions packaged bank account in 2009.
TSB accepts that it gave Mr A some wrong information at this stage
Mr and Mrs B complain that UKMS Money Solutions Limited mis-sold them a debt management plan.
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 2,612 complaints mapped to this issue, received between July 2021 and August 2023, across all US consumer financial products.
Most common CFPB issue labels within this mapping:
Advertising and marketing, including promotional offers — 2,612 complaints
Source: CFPB Consumer Complaint Database, not scoped to banking — the CFPB’s complaint categories span all consumer financial products, not just banking.