FOS annual report: home loans the dispute hotspot
Bank of Queensland markets itself with the message that "it's possible to love a bank" but it has proved to be one of the financial institutions whose customers are more likely to take a dispute to the Financial Ombudsman Service. Other credit providers that were prominent in FOS's dispute records during the 2013/14 financial year were HSBC Bank Australia and Bank of Melbourne.Rather than publish the raw number of disputes for each financial institution, FOS provides a measure called "chance of a dispute coming to FOS", which shows the number of disputes relative to the size of the business.For example, the likelihood that a home loan borrower will take a dispute with their lender to the Financial Ombudsman Service is 45.6 in 100,000. That is, FOS's complaints file for 2013/14 shows that for every 100,000 home loan customers the median number of disputes is 45.6.Home lending was the product category with the highest chance of a dispute coming to FOS. Compared with the median of 45.6, Bank of Queensland had a median of 103.9 - the worst rating in the category.Other lenders whose chance of dispute was above the median included Rams Financial Group, at 89, and Bank of Melbourne, at 72.4. Both lenders are part of the Westpac Group. Westpac itself had a good rating, at 28.2.Among the other big banks, ANZ's rating was 50, National Australia Bank's was 58.7 and Commonwealth Bank's 46.3. Commonwealth's Bankwest subsidiary had a rating of 59.9.One of last year's poor performers, Macquarie Bank, had a significantly improved rating - 55.8 compared with 285.5 last year.The home lender with the lowest chance of a dispute was ME Bank, at 20.8.The other product category that had a high chance of dispute was consumer loans, where the median was 37.4. Consumer finance providers with high dispute ratings included Rapid Loans, at 281.4, GE Automotive Financial Services (139.8), Mercedes-Benz Financial Services (138.3), BOQ (98.6), HSBC Bank Australia (88.2) and NAB (75.8).When it came to credit cards, the overall likelihood that a customer would take a dispute to FOS was 24.6 in 100,000. The worst performer in this category was Lion Finance, with a rating of 81.3, followed by HSBC (50.2), Macquarie Bank (41.2), Bank of Melbourne (40.6) and Citibank (33.4).