Medical and health insurance was again the second most complained about financial product in the first half of 2025, according to the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA).
The sector once again claimed the unfortunate honour of receiving the second most complaints per 1,000 products sold, although the sector did improve slightly.
Data from the regulator showed customers made 7.02 complaints per 1,000 sales, down slightly from 7.3 in the second half of 2024.
This maintained the drop from 9.91 in the first six months of 2024 when it was also the second most complained about product.
Second charge mortgages remained the most complained about product receiving 39 complaints per 1,000 sales. Equity release and impaired credit (6.96 and 6.45 respectively) were just below medical and health insurance.
By number of complaints made medical and health insurance remained the seventh most complained about product, but this was behind typically far larger mass-market and compulsory products including current accounts, motor and transport insurance and credit cards.
In total 76,182 health insurance complaints were received from January to June, down slightly from 77,075 in July to December 2024 and sharply down from 95,886 a year earlier.
Protection grievances steady
Protection products which generally receive fewer complaints remained largely stable.
Income protection (IP) and other accident, sickness and unemployment plans received 1.26 complaints per 1,000, down from 1.64 and returning to the level of a year before.
However, as IP sales have increased over the last year that means complaint numbers have risen from 4,108 in H1 2024 to 4,528 six months ago and then 4,678 in the first half of this year.
Whole of life, term assurance and critical illness (CI) plans are grouped together by the FCA.
They again received 0.8 complaints per 1,000 largely unchanged, with actual numbers slightly up to 24,950 from 23,622.
Complaints and redress rise
Overall financial services firms received 1.85 million complaints in the six-month period, a 4% increase from 2024 H2 when 1.78 million were made.
Current accounts (541,493), motor and transport insurance (255,192) and credit cards (211,903) remained the top three most complained about products in numbers.
The FCA noted that the total amount of redress paid in 2025 H1 was £283m, a 20% increase on the 2024 H2 figure of £236m, with the average compensation payment rising from £207 to £238.
Redress data for individual products is not available but insurance and pure protection market redress grew from £54.5m in H2 2024 to £85.4m in H1 2025.
This is despite overall insurance and pure protection complaint numbers decreased 0.2% from 718,497 to 717,406.