A rate rise built on fewer decisions
Between the most recent 90-day window and the one before it, the uphold rate for Bank of Scotland Plc in published Financial Ombudsman decisions rose by 5.9 percentage points, from 11.3% to 17.2%. On its own, that looks like a meaningful deterioration in outcomes for the bank. But the same two windows show something else happening at the same time: the number of decisions published fell from 274 to 96, a drop of 178 decisions, or 65.0%.
Both windows clear Veste's minimum sample threshold of 30 decisions, so the comparison is not disqualified outright. But a swing in uphold rate that coincides with a two-thirds fall in volume deserves scrutiny before it is read as a signal about how Bank of Scotland Plc is handling complaints.
The numbers in full
Across the full published history captured by Veste, Bank of Scotland Plc has been the subject of 27,170 decisions, of which 1,769 were fully upheld, 2,499 partially upheld and 22,902 not upheld. That produces an overall uphold rate, calculated as (upheld plus half of partially upheld) divided by total, of 11.1%. The earliest decision in this series was published on 3 April 2013 and the most recent on 11 June 2026.
That all-time rate of 11.1% sits well below the corpus-wide baseline uphold rate of 28.8% across the 401,815 decisions in Veste's full dataset. Firms and products vary widely, and the baseline is a broad average across the whole of the Ombudsman's published caseload, not a benchmark that any single firm is expected to match. Even so, it is a useful reference point: Bank of Scotland Plc's long-run rate has consistently sat below that wider average.
What the annual figures show
Looking year by year gives a longer view than the 90-day comparison. In 2022, Bank of Scotland Plc had 935 decisions published with an uphold rate of 17.4%. In 2023, that was 766 decisions at 16.5%. In 2024, the volume rose to 914 decisions and the uphold rate climbed to 17.5%, the highest annual rate in this run. In 2025, decisions rose again to 997 but the uphold rate fell to 12.6%, the lowest of the five years shown. So far in 2026, with 348 decisions published, the uphold rate stands at 13.5%.
This matters for interpreting the 90-day swing. The annual series shows the uphold rate moving between roughly 12.6% and 17.5% across five years without any of those movements being especially large in isolation. A 5.9 percentage point move over a 90-day window sits inside the range the annual figures have already shown over a longer period, which suggests the recent shift may be consistent with ordinary variation rather than a step change.
The monthly trend
Veste's monthly series for Bank of Scotland Plc runs for 25 months, from June 2024 to June 2026. Early in that run, monthly uphold rates were higher: June 2024 opened at 21.6%, and the rate stayed in a band mostly between 15.9% and 21.7% through to March 2025. From around mid-2025 the monthly rate fell, dropping to 10.8% in July 2025, 9.8% in August 2025, and reaching some of the lowest points in the series at 8.5% in both October 2025 and December 2025.
The most recent months tell a more complicated story, and one where caution is needed. February 2026 recorded 108 decisions at a 13.4% uphold rate, and March 2026 recorded 126 decisions, the largest single month in the series, at 12.3%. Then volumes fell sharply: April 2026 had just 13 decisions, with a 30.8% uphold rate; May 2026 had 17 decisions at 14.7%; and June 2026 had only 6 decisions at 16.7%. None of these last three months reaches Veste's minimum sample threshold of 30 decisions on its own, so none of them should be treated as a reliable monthly reading in isolation. They do, however, help explain the 90-day period comparison: the current 90-day window (96 decisions) is dominated by these thinner, more recent months, while the prior window (274 decisions) draws on the fuller volumes seen earlier in 2026.
What might be driving this, and what cannot be said
The evidence available to Veste shows two things happening together: decision volume falling sharply in the most recent 90 days, and the uphold rate rising over the same period. It does not show why volumes fell. Publication timing by the Ombudsman, the mix of case types reaching decision, or simple lag in when cases are published could all affect monthly counts, and Veste's data does not distinguish between these possibilities.
It is also worth being precise about what a rising uphold rate does and does not indicate. An uphold rate is a proportion of published decisions found in the complainant's favour, in whole or in part. It says nothing about the total number of complaints made to the firm, since published decisions are a subset of the wider complaints population, nor does it establish a change in the bank's conduct. A higher rate over a small sample of 96 decisions can arise from a handful of cases going one way rather than another, particularly when, as here, several of the most recent months included fewer than 30 decisions each.
Individual decisions as illustration
Veste's dataset includes examples of recent published decisions concerning Bank of Scotland plc, which illustrate the range of issues reaching the Ombudsman rather than establishing any pattern.
In one case decided on 11 June 2026 (DRN-6100818), a customer disputed a chargeback reversal after Bank of Scotland gave a temporary refund of £14,200 following a disputed watch purchase, then reversed it when the merchant successfully defended the claim. The Ombudsman found the bank had acted fairly throughout, having clearly warned the customer not to spend the refunded money pending the outcome. The complaint was not upheld.
In another case from the same date (DRN-6333021), a customer disputed roughly 25 unauthorised transactions made after her bank card and phone were stolen. The Ombudsman found that the bank's failure to block the card promptly after being told of the fraud was more than a minor error, and upheld the complaint, with total compensation of £200 found to be fair.
A case decided on 5 June 2026 (DRN-6226899) concerned delayed mortgage possession and a subsequent shortfall sale at £120,000, leaving a shortfall of £138,000. The Ombudsman found the bank's settlement offer, which included £1,000 compensation, was fair, and did not uphold the complaint. A further case from 2 June 2026 (DRN-6381527), concerning a buy-to-let mortgage after term expiry, was also not upheld, with the Ombudsman finding the bank had reasonably given the borrowers latitude to find a solution.
These four decisions cannot be used to characterise the bank's overall performance. They are included because they were among the most recent published decisions in Veste's dataset and show the type of dispute the Ombudsman is currently deciding involving this firm.
Complaint categories in context
Veste's related categories give some sense of how uphold rates vary by complaint type across the wider corpus. PPI mis-selling complaints, the largest category by volume at 15,218 decisions, has an uphold rate of 7.4%. Irresponsible lending complaints, a much smaller category at 626 decisions, has a considerably higher uphold rate of 25.6%. Service failures generally, at 1,164 decisions, sit at 21.1%, while other regulated complaints, at 1,038 decisions, sit at 6.6%. These figures are drawn from the wider corpus rather than being specific to Bank of Scotland Plc, but they illustrate that uphold rates vary substantially by the nature of the complaint, which is a factor that can affect any single firm's rate depending on the mix of cases it receives in a given period.
What the data does not tell us
Veste's figures are limited to published Ombudsman decisions, which is a filtered population, not the full range of complaints made to Bank of Scotland Plc. The data does not include complaints resolved directly between the firm and the customer, complaints that did not reach a final Ombudsman decision, or the total number of complaints received. Firms are also recorded under the name printed on each decision, so subsidiaries of the same banking group are not combined into a single parent figure; this decision series relates specifically to entries recorded as Bank of Scotland Plc.
The implication
The rise in uphold rate over the most recent 90-day window is real in the sense that it is drawn directly from the underlying decisions, and both windows compared meet Veste's minimum sample size. But the same period saw a 65.0% fall in decision volume, and the three most recent individual months each fell below the 30-decision threshold Veste treats as a reliable minimum. Set against a five-year annual range of 12.6% to 17.5%, the current move sits within territory the firm's published record has already occupied. The most useful conclusion from this data is not that something has changed at Bank of Scotland Plc, but that a short-window uphold rate calculated on a smaller sample should be treated with more caution than the same calculation on a fuller one, and that readers should watch whether the rate persists once monthly volumes return to their previous size.