'Name and shame' for finance firms

The Financial Services Authority wants all firms that receive more than 500 complaints every six months to publish details on their websites by the end of August.

They will have to include information on how many complaints were opened and closed during the past six months, what proportion were dealt with within eight weeks and what percentage were upheld.

The FSA hopes that making the information public will help to drive up complaints-handling standards across the industry.

The regulator will use the data, which will be divided into five product areas, to publish its own tables twice a year, with the first one due in September.

Sheila Nicoll, the FSA's director of conduct policy, said: "We believe that this will help improve how firms treat their customers and provide incentives for firms to deal more effectively with complaints."

The number of complaints received by the Financial Ombudsman Service, which consumers can go to if they are unhappy about the way a firm has handled their complaint, has soared four-fold since it was set up in 2001. During the year to the end of March 2009, the service upheld 57 per cent of complaints,against a long-term average of 30 per cent to 40 per cent.