The FinancialThe United Kingdom’s financial regulator, the Financial Conduct Authority has published a report on complaints received by the authority in the second half of 2019. While the regulator saw the total amount of complaints received rise significantly, from 4.29 million in the first half of 2019 to 6.02 million in the second half, the number of complaints received against FX or CFD brokers actually stayed quite steady and actually feel, if comparing the figures to the 2H of 2018, a year over year comparison.
Driving the increase in overall received complaints was payment protection insurance (PPI) products, with the regulator seeing a 75% increase in the number of complaints received for this category. Overall, PPI products contributed to 62% of all complaints submitted during the period.
With regards to Forex and CFD complaints, the FCA recorded an uptick of 18.3% from 1H 2019 with 1,163 complaints as opposed to 1,376 received in the second half of the year. Yet, in the second half of 2018, the regulator received a total of 1,596 complaints, which represents a 13.8% drop in such complaints year over year. The drop in complaints in the YoY comparison may be attributed to lower trading volumes as financial markets mostly stayed within the range-bound territory in 2019, causing fewer issues during trading.