The FCA’s latest complaints data should give every financial services provider pause for thought. In the second half of 2025, firms received 1.87 million complaints, up 0.9% from 1.85 million in the first half of the year.

Insurance and pure protection complaints rose 10.1%, from 717,523 to 790,329, while the total amount of redress paid in H2 2025 was £236.2m. Slightly encouragingly for the mortgage sector, home finance complaints decreased 3.8% from 78,616 (2025 H1) to 75,658 (2025 H2).

These figures clearly show where customers feel something has gone badly wrong enough to formally complain but are only part of the picture.

Most providers already have robust processes for handling complaints. They know how many they receive, how quickly they resolve them, what gets upheld, and how much redress is paid. That’s important management information, and the FCA itself uses complaints data to evaluate firms’ treatment of customers, track performance and identify potential concerns in products and markets.

Looking beyond formal complaints

But there’s a danger in only looking at formal complaints. By the time a customer complains, the issue has already escalated. And for every customer who does complain, there are many more who don’t.

Our research has shown that 42% of people experienced some kind of frustration with a financial provider in the past year, yet only 12% say they always complain directly to the company. The rest either stay silent, leave quietly, tell friends and family, or take their frustration somewhere else.

That ‘silent majority’ should worry providers just as much as the customers who appear in their complaints data. A complaint gives a firm a chance to respond. Silence gives no such warning. A customer who finds a policy document confusing, an app difficult to use, a renewal unclear, or a service interaction disappointing may never raise a formal complaint. They may simply decide not to come back.

This is where reviews have real strategic value.

The power of reviews

Too often, reviews are still treated primarily as a marketing tool. Of course, they play that role. Our research has found that 84% of consumers trust reviews from other consumers, and that 69% are likely to change their mind after reading reviews. In financial services, where trust, risk and confidence are central to decision-making, reviews are not a nice-to-have. They are part of how consumers decide who to trust with their money.

Our research has also shown that 74% of people read reviews before changing providers, almost seven in ten walk away if they see more negative feedback than positive, and financial services firms need an average 4.1-star rating just to be considered. But the real opportunity is bigger than reputation, as reviews are a brilliant source of insight.

Positive reviews show what customers value, which parts of the proposition are resonating, where colleagues are delivering great outcomes, and what language customers use when they describe a good experience. This helps firms understand their strengths in the customer’s own words, rather than through internal assumptions.

Negative reviews are just as valuable, if not more so. They can highlight friction in the journey before it turns into a complaint. They can show whether customers are struggling with onboarding, communications, claims, renewals, value for money, digital tools or post-sale support. They help providers see not just that something has gone wrong, but why.

That is a crucial distinction, as a retention report may show customers are leaving and a complaints dashboard may show a rise in a particular category. But reviews reveal the human story behind the trend such as the unclear letter, the long wait, the confusing app journey, the feeling that a provider was not listening.

Meeting compliance obligations

In the context of Consumer Duty, that kind of insight is becoming increasingly important. The FCA has made clear that firms must monitor the outcomes customers receive, and its Consumer Duty board report guidance highlights the importance of good-quality data, analysis of different customer types, and effective action where monitoring identifies issues.

Reviews are not a substitute for complaints data, operational MI, customer surveys or vulnerability monitoring, but they are an important complement because they capture customer sentiment in the moment, in the customer’s own words.

The important point is that providers need to actively encourage reviews, not passively hope they appear.

If a firm only hears from customers who are extremely happy or extremely unhappy, it gets a distorted view. A proactive review strategy helps bring more voices into the conversation. It gives providers a broader and more representative picture of the customer base, including those who might otherwise never speak up.

That means asking for feedback at the right moments. For example after an application, after onboarding, after a claim, after a service interaction, at renewal, or when a product matures. It also means making the process easy, accessible and transparent and customers are more likely to share feedback when they know it will be listened to and acted upon.

The providers that get the most value from reviews are those that close the loop. They don’t simply collect ratings and display them on a website. They analyse themes, benchmark performance, identify recurring pain points, respond to customers, and feed insight back into proposition, product, service and communications teams.

The FCA complaints figures are a useful reminder that customer dissatisfaction remains a major issue across financial services. But they should also prompt a wider question for every provider, what are customers trying to tell us before they reach the point of complaint?

The firms that can answer that question well will be better placed to improve service, strengthen propositions, retain customers and evidence better outcomes. Those that don’t may only discover the problem when it appears in complaints data, redress figures or lost business.

Final thoughts

In financial services, trust is built by listening. Reviews are one of the clearest ways customers tell providers what is working, what is not, and what needs to change and so providers should actively encourage them, welcome the good and the bad, and treat every review as insight that can help build a better business.

Jake Sandford is head of data and analytics at Smart Money People