It has been revealed by the Financial Services Authority that the banks were hit by more than two million complaints, while the financial services firms paid out £284 million in reimbursement to consumers in the second half of last year.

According to FSA, the total number of complaints against all financial services firms was pushed to 2.6 million from July to the end of December 2009, due to back-dated complaints about unauthorized bank charges.

The complaints about overdraft charges were suspended by FSA pending the Supreme Court’s judgment in November, which ruled against the Office of Fair Trading and favored the banks.

There is a dramatic number of increase in the number of complaints against banks, but the number of consumers declining problems with financial advisers has went down by 19% for the second half of 2009 as compared to the same period of 2008.

About GBP284 million was paid by firms as the total amount of redress, with the largest amount of redress by product for general insurance plus pure protection of GBP144 million. As a matter of fact, complaints about banking products in the period increased to 2.01 million.