The Financial Ombudsman’s annual review has revealed a significant increase in complaints about personal pension plans.

The review, revealed earlier today, showcased that new complaints about personal pension plans have increased by nearly a quarter or 23% since last year. Annuity complaints, however, are stable. 

This year, the Ombudsman received 1,985 complaints relating to personal pension plans, representing an increase of just over 300 compared to last year’s report.

The report also states that there have been 1,174 complaints about Small Self-Administered Schemes and Self-Invested Personal Pensions. Three quarters of these issues related to advice in investing in UCIS (unregulated collective investment schemes), from people who had taken out a SIPP.

This past year alone, the Ombudsman received 1.6 million enquiries and over 5000 per working day from people across the UK. Issues ranged from general financial problems to pet insurance and portfolio management. One in five of these queries went on to become investigations according to the review.

Over the course of the year, the Ombudsman resolved 438,802 complaints with half of these going in the consumer’s favour. Just over half of these were down to PPI, which proved to be the most complained about financial product, with the Ombudsman reviewing 188,718 new cases in total.

The report revealed that people from the North East were more likely to be complaining about PPI and the Ombudsman stated it was still receiving up to 4000 complains about this financial product each week. As a result, this now means that the Ombudsman has looked after 3 million cases since 2001 and half of these have related to PPI.

The report also states that four of the UK’s largest banking groups account for 56% of all complaints received by the Ombudsman.

Commenting on the annual review, chief ombudsman Caroline Wayman said: “It’s been another year of big numbers and big changes for everyone. But we mustn’t lose sight of the lives and livelihoods behind every complaint we resolve.

“That’s why preventing mistakes of the past from happening again will help restore trust and fairness in financial services.”

A more detailed analysis is expected later today when the full report is released.