The Financial Ombudsman Service (FOS) has corrected its latest complaints figures for private medical insurance (PMI) and income protection products (IP) after Health & Protection questioned the original data.
As a result, falls of around 95% in IP and PMI complaints from April to June as previously identified have been revised to become largely in line with recent trends.
The ombudsman swiftly addressed the issue which was caused by almost 600 complaints for the two products not being fully attributed to them yet.
It has since shared the correct figures with Health & Protection and updated the data on its website.
IP and PMI data on par
The products are both included within the wider medical insurance sector under the ombudsman’s data classification.
The original data for the first three months of the 2025-26 year issued last week showed almost no complaints for PMI and IP – just 23 and less than 10 respectively.
However, there were 588 cases awaiting classification within the medical insurance category.
The FOS has since completed this classification after Health & Protection contacted it, which brought the PMI total up to 429 complaints and IP total to 187.
These were similar to the 414 and 194 respectively in the same period last year.
However, the FOS did see a 29% increase in new complaints across critical illness cover (CI) with these increasing to 163 from 126 a year earlier. The 14% upheld rate remained unchanged.
There were also small falls in the number of complaints for both whole of life products to 66 and 113 respectively.
Overall complaints down
Overall cases received by the FOS fell by 8.8% to 68,000 new complaints between April and June 2025, down from 74,600 in the same period last year.
The ombudsman said it had seen lower levels of complaints about everyday financial products such as current accounts, credit cards and motor insurance compared to the same period reported last year.
Hire purchase (motor) was by far the biggest driver of complaints with 24,300 received, followed by current accounts (7,800) and credit cards (6,600).
