July to December 2021

Our H2 2021 results continue to show significant reductions in complaint volumes across Barclays UK year-on-year, largely driven by changes in customer behaviour, with customers interacting with us more through our digital channels.

• Excluding Payment Protection Insurance, we have seen an overall reduction in BUK complaints year-on-year vs H2-20 (23 per cent) and half-on-half vs H1-21 (9 per cent).
• We have seen the drop in BUK banking and credit card related complaints versus 2020 continue (down 21 per cent on H2-20 and 7 per cent on H1-21). This is largely due to customers interacting with us more through digital.
• We have seen a 52 per cent decline in complaints for investments versus the second half of 2020 and a 24 per cent decrease vs first half of 2021. This is due to improvements made to some of our processes and platform.

Samantha White, Barclays UK Head of Virtual Channels, said: “As our customers continue to recover from the difficulties faced over the past two years, it’s essential that as their bank we provide the support and the high level of service they expect from us, which is why our colleagues continue to work tirelessly to improve our processes and customer service.

“It’s encouraging to see complaints reduce again both year-on-year and half-on-half, however there’s always more that can be done and we won’t stop in our mission to create a perfect customer experience.”

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 7 per cent fewer complaints per 1,000 accounts than in H1 2021 and 19 per cent fewer than in H2-20.

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 in 2020, facilitating £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’ growing Eagle Labs network helps to connect, educate and accelerate the growth of ambitious UK businesses and entrepreneurs, through nurturing a collaborative environment, expert 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, while our Funding Readiness programme helps demystify the funding landscape for businesses looking to finance their growth.

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

Protect our customers against fraud and scams

Throughout 2021 we doubled 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 reached millions of customers, arming them with the knowledge they need to spot a scam and prevent themselves from becoming a victim.

We continue to invest millions 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.

Additionally, we have also implemented functionality in our customer journeys 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, and scam warnings tailored to the purpose of the payment our customer is making.

In October, we launched App ID, which as well as letting our customers identify themselves to us on the phone or in branch, lets us prevent fraud and scams by allowing our customer service agents to confirm they’re legitimate Barclays colleagues by sending a notification to the customer’s app with their name, to verify.

As 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, we continue to collaborate to find solutions and in September launched the 159 fraud phone line, which allows customers to hang up on suspected scammers and be connected to their bank directly by dialling 159.

Help customers stay in control of their finances

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. These card details can be used immediately to make purchases online and the card can be connected to Apple Pay. The feature helps ensure customers continue to have instant and secure access to their money as they wait for their replacement card to arrive and enables new customers to enjoy immediate spending as they wait for their physical debit card to arrive after opening an account.

Through their Barclays app, our customers can put in place a number of card controls to personalise it to the way in which they would like it to be used.  For example, they can set spend limits, turn off certain payment types (e.g. remote payments), change the limit for daily ATM withdrawals and choose to either temporarily freeze or block payments in the event of their card being lost or stolen.

Help our customers get on the property ladder

We’re committed to helping customers achieve their financial goals, and in the second half of 2021 we helped our customers to buy their first home and get onto the property ladder by issuing nearly 23,000 mortgages, 57 per cent more mortgages for first time buyers compared to the same period the year before.

The Data Explained

The complaint tables below provide a breakdown of all complaints made to Barclays between July and December 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 almost 36 million accounts and Barclays Bank PLC has over 1.3 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.