FOS reveals most dispute-prone banks
Bank of Queensland, Bankwest and HSBC Bank Australia have the dubious distinction of appearing in several banking categories with above-average dispute levels in the Financial Ombudsman Service's 2015/16 dispute league table.Customers were more likely to end up in dispute with those banks over home loans, credit cards, consumer loans and deposits and payments than they were with any other banks.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 27.8 in 100,000. That is, FOS's complaints file for 2015/16 shows that for every 100,000 home loan customers the median number of disputes was 27.8.Housing finance. Compared with the median chance of a dispute of 27.8, Bank of Queensland had the worst rating, at 80.9. BOQ also had the worst rating in the 2014/15 report.Other lenders whose chance of dispute was above the median included Bankwest, at 59.7, HSBC Bank Australia (58.7) and Rams Financial Group (48.3 per cent).Among the big banks, Commonwealth Bank's ratings was 32.1, NAB's was 22.6, ANZ's 21.7 and Westpac's 19.7.Credit cards. The median chance of a dispute over a credit card account was 12.7. HSBC Bank Australia had the worst rating, at 39.4.Other credit card issuers with above-average dispute levels were American Express, at 27.2, Bank of Melbourne (26.3), Bankwest (25.1) and Citibank (23.2).Westpac and Commonwealth Bank were above the median in this category, while NAB and ANZ were well below it.Consumer loans. The median chance of a dispute over a consumer loan was 32.9. Freedom Leisure Finance had the worst rating, at 165.7.Other consumer finance providers with above-average dispute levels were HSBC, at 117.6, Bankwest (110.3) and BOQ (98.7). All the big banks were below the median.Deposit taking and payments. There was a low chance of dispute in this category - at just 2.1. HSBC had the worst rating, at 11.8.Others with poor ratings compared with the median were BOQ, at 4.4, Bankwest (3.9) and ME (3.7).