January to June 2021

Our H1 2021 results continue to show significant reductions in complaints volumes across Barclays UK year-on-year, largely due to the coronavirus pandemic and restrictions causing decreased customer activity.

• Excluding Payment Protection Insurance, we have seen an overall reduction in BUK complaints year-on-year vs H1-20 (11 per cent) and half-on-half vs H2-20 (15 per cent).
• We have seen the drop in BUK ‘banking and credit’ related complaints versus 2020 continue (down 17 per cent on H1-20 and 15 per cent on H2-20). This is largely due to decreased customer spending and transactions caused by the coronavirus pandemic.
• We have seen a 35 per cent decline in complaints for investments versus the first half of 2020 and a 37 per cent decrease vs second half of 2020. This is due to improvements made to some of our processes and platform.

Samantha White, Barclays UK Head of Virtual Channels, said: “We have worked tirelessly to provide the high level of service our customers expect throughout the difficulties of the past eighteen months. As our customers and clients now look to readjust, it is more important than ever that we provide a flawless experience, no matter the channel they choose to bank through.

“Our colleagues continue to work exceptionally hard to meet and exceed these expectations and we remain committed to delivering excellent customer experiences, be it through branch, by phone or via our mobile app or online banking.”

We are one of the largest financial service providers in the UK, so it also makes sense to look at the numbers in the context of our size. For example, in the banking category, we received 13 per cent fewer complaints per 1,000 accounts than in H2 2020.

We remain absolutely committed to delivering excellent customer experiences, and exceeding what our customers expect from their bank. In recent months, we have taken steps to:

Support our customers and clients through coronavirus

We continue to support over one million small business customers across the UK through the challenges of the coronavirus pandemic. Barclays mobilised the Government business loan schemes in a matter of days last year, and we have facilitated £29.5 billion of funding, supporting over 350,000 businesses of all shapes and sizes in every region and every sector across the country.

Thousands of our customers have taken advantage of the Pay As You Grow (PAYG) measures launched by the Government to provide businesses who have a Bounce Back Loan with flexible repayment options.  We know that customers who have taken on debt for the first time may need more support and our team of hundreds of expert relationship managers are on hand to help. Our digital services, including our app, online banking and Money Management calculator, are helping businesses to manage their repayments.

In addition to financial support, Barclays has a network of 24 Eagle Labs helping to foster an ecosystem of like-minded entrepreneurs, providing access to a collaborative environment, mentoring and events. Our accelerator programmes, including our Barclays Black Founder Accelerator, and Female Founders Forum, are designed to champion diversity in innovation and entrepreneurship.

We also introduce customers to world-class partners, including Propel, MarketFinance, Nimbla and Smart Pension. These companies provide businesses with even more flexibility and choice to best suit their financial needs, through innovative asset finance, invoice finance, invoice insurance and employee pension solutions respectively.

Protect our customers against fraud and scams

In what has been a particularly tough year for fraud and scams across the industry, as scammers have exploited the coronavirus pandemic, we are doubling down on our support for UK Finance with their national Take Five campaign, to help keep the public safe. Through a multi-stage educational campaign, with content across our social media, email, in app notifications and media outreach, we are working to arm our customers with the knowledge they need to spot a scam and prevent themselves from becoming a victim.

In addition, we continue to invest into multi-layered security systems that help protect customers and typically prevent several thousands of attempted fraudulent transactions every day. This includes a sophisticated transaction profiling system that is unique to every customer. We also implement functionality to help customers to stop scams occurring. This includes confirmation of payee, which lets customers know if beneficiary account details match the account name when making a payment to a participant bank.

To stop scams at source, we are founding members of Stop Scams UK, a cross industry group made up of banks, telecoms and tech firms that have come together to put an end to scams by collaborating together, sharing best practices and engaging with the government and regulators to make it harder for scammers to operate.

Help customers stay in control of their finances

To help manage outgoing payments, our customers can now view recurring card payments that they make from their debit cards, such as music and TV subscriptions, all in one place on the Barclays app, seeing clearly the frequency of the payments and the number of payments made to date.

Customers who open a new current account, or report their existing debit card as lost or stolen will now be able to view their new debit card details instantly in their Barclays app. This means that when they need their card, they won’t have to wait for it to be delivered to make payments online or make contactless payments from their phone.

Customers can also now collect their loyalty points and rewards automatically in their app when they pay with their Barclays debit card at participating retailers, benefiting from the retailers’ reward schemes without having to carry a wallet full of physical loyalty cards.

Help our customers get on the property ladder

We’re committed to helping customers achieve their financial goals and in the first half of 2021, we helped our customers to buy their first home and get onto the property ladder by issuing nearly 26,000 mortgages, 79 per cent more mortgages for first time buyers than the year before.

The Data Explained

The complaint tables below provide a breakdown of all complaints made to Barclays between January and June 2021.

The complaints data is segmented across the six FCA product categories. The FCA also require firms to quote the complaint volumes in the context of the number of accounts, so we have included the number of complaints we received per 1,000 accounts for each of the six categories in the first column of each table (labelled ‘Provision’). Barclays Bank UK PLC has just over 36 million accounts and Barclays Bank PLC has over 1.1 million accounts within the Banking category. This includes all current and savings accounts, as well as credit cards.

In the last column of each table we have also highlighted the main cause of the complaints, as defined by the FCA, for each category. The majority of the complaints we received were classed as ‘general administration and customer service’, which includes areas such as delays and bank errors.