The number of complaints about foreign Exchange (Forex ), contracts for difference (CFD), and spread betting products in the United Kingdom surprisingly fell in the final half of 2019 year-on-year, according to data from the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) published this Thursday.
Taking a look at the complaints figures for regulated firms for the second half of 2019, the FCA received more complaints than it did in the first half of the year, rising from 4.29 million in H1 up to 6.02 million in the second half.
Driving this increase was payment protection insurance (PPI) products, with the regulator seeing a 75 percent increase in the volume of complaints received for this category. Overall, PPI products contributed to 62 percent of all complaints lodged during this period.
FCA sees YoY fall in FX & CFD complaints
During the second half of last year, the British regulator received a total 1,376 complaints about FX, CFDs, and spread betting products. When measuring this against the final half of the previous year, H2 of 2018, which posted a total of 1,596 complaints for the period, the number has fallen by 13.8 percent.
Although complaints may have fallen on a yearly comparison in H2 of 2019, the period did post an uptick in the number of complaints received in the first half of 2019, which was 1,163. Therefore, H2 saw an 18.3 percent growth in complaints from the first half of the year.
For investment bonds, however, according to the FCA’s data, the number of complaints soared in the second half of 2019, jumping from 8,094 in the second half of 2018 up to 10,129 in the most recent period. This represents an increase of 25.1 percent. It is also higher by around 13.0 percent from the first half of the year.
Other investment products/funds raked in 6,240 complaints in the final six months of last year. As a percentage, this is slightly more than the 6,134 complaints in H2 of 2018 by 1.7 percent. However, complaints received by the FCA have dropped by 13.4 percent from the first half of the year.
