A lower uphold rate, but also fewer decisions
In the most recent 90-day window measured by Veste, 308 published Financial Ombudsman decisions named HSBC UK Bank Plc, down from 390 in the prior 90-day window, a fall of 82 decisions, or 21.0%. Over the same comparison, the uphold rate fell from 21.8% to 15.9%, a drop of 5.9 percentage points. Both windows meet Veste's minimum sample threshold of 30 decisions, so the comparison is not resting on a handful of cases. But a 5.9 percentage point swing on a base of a few hundred decisions is still the kind of movement that can occur without any change in how a firm handles complaints, and the longer monthly series is essential context before drawing any conclusion.
HSBC UK Bank Plc's uphold rate, defined by Veste as (fully upheld decisions plus half of partially upheld decisions) divided by total decisions, sits below the 22.8% recorded across all 7,532 published decisions involving the firm since 2018, and further below the 28.8% uphold rate across Veste's entire corpus of 401,815 published Ombudsman decisions. Whatever is happening in the latest quarter, HSBC UK Bank Plc's overall published record already runs below the market-wide baseline.
The numbers behind the headline figure
Across the full period Veste holds for HSBC UK Bank Plc, from its first published decision on 11 December 2018 to its most recent on 15 June 2026, the firm has featured in 7,532 decisions. Of these, 1,269 were fully upheld, 894 partially upheld, and 5,369 not upheld, giving the overall uphold rate of 22.8%.
The monthly trend series, spanning 25 months from June 2024 to June 2026, shows the uphold rate has moved between a low of 11.1% (May 2026) and a high of 28.7% (July 2024) during that window. Monthly volumes have also varied considerably, from 54 decisions in July and August 2024 to 201 in March 2026. The most recent month in the series, June 2026, recorded 60 decisions with an uphold rate of 15.0%, close to the level seen in the 90-day comparison. April and May 2026 saw uphold rates of 17.8% and 11.1% respectively, both below the monthly average implied by the wider series, suggesting the recent 90-day figure reflects a cluster of subdued months rather than a single anomalous one.
Context from the year-on-year figures
Veste's year-on-year breakdown offers a longer vantage point. In 2022, HSBC UK Bank Plc's published decisions carried an uphold rate of 28.1% across 1,085 decisions. That fell to 25.5% in 2023 (952 decisions), 23.2% in 2024 (1,011 decisions), 20.7% in 2025 (1,214 decisions), and stands at 18.8% so far in 2026 across 656 decisions. Each of these annual samples meets Veste's minimum threshold for characterisation.
This five-year sequence shows a fairly consistent downward drift in the uphold rate, from 28.1% to 18.8%, even as annual decision volumes have generally risen, from 1,085 in 2022 to 1,214 in 2025, before the partial-year 2026 figure of 656. Read against this backdrop, the latest quarterly fall to 15.9% looks less like an isolated event and more like a continuation of a trend that has been running for several years. That does not tell us why the uphold rate has fallen, only that the direction of travel in the most recent quarter is consistent with the direction seen across the preceding four calendar years.
What might be driving the pattern, and what remains unclear
Veste's data allows us to see that decision volume fell alongside the uphold rate in the latest quarter, but it does not show a causal link between the two. A fall in the number of published decisions could reflect fewer complaints referred to the Ombudsman, a change in the mix of complaint types being decided, or simply the normal irregularity of case publication timing. Veste's dataset does not include the reasons behind changes in referral volume, so any explanation of the volume drop would be speculation rather than analysis.
On complaint categories, Veste's related claim-type data (drawn from the wider corpus rather than from HSBC UK Bank Plc alone) shows that fraud reimbursement complaints under the Authorised Push Payment framework carry a 28.6% uphold rate across 1,980 decisions corpus-wide, while account closure complaints carry a 19.6% uphold rate across 771 decisions, and card or payment disputes carry a 16.4% uphold rate across 659 decisions. These figures describe the wider Ombudsman corpus, not HSBC UK Bank Plc specifically, since firm-level splits by category were not supplied for this firm. They are included here as market context for readers assessing where HSBC UK Bank Plc's overall 22.8% uphold rate sits relative to categories that feature heavily in current account and card disputes, the product areas illustrated in the case examples below.
Illustrative decisions
Four decisions published in June 2026 involving HSBC UK Bank Plc, all not upheld, illustrate the range of issues reaching the Ombudsman rather than proving any pattern.
In one case (DRN-6338970, decided 15 June 2026), a complainant lost £15,980 to a job task scam involving cryptocurrency payments. HSBC UK Bank Plc had blocked one payment and warned the complainant on 23 October that he was likely being scammed, but payments continued. The firm had already refunded £8,880 plus £300 compensation. The Ombudsman found the complainant bore equal responsibility for continuing to send money after an explicit warning, and that the existing refund already exceeded what a 50/50 fault allocation would produce.
In another (DRN-6314558, 15 June 2026), a complainant said replacement debit and credit cards were misdirected after she lost her original cards while in temporary housing. The Ombudsman found HSBC UK Bank PLC had sent the cards to a branch reasonably, given the circumstances, and had redirected them appropriately when that branch closed.
A third case (DRN-5979501, 12 June 2026) concerned a credit card default recorded after a complainant said he believed a direct debit had been arranged. The Ombudsman found HSBC UK Bank Plc had made reasonable contact attempts through multiple channels before recording the default.
A fourth (DRN-6414520, 12 June 2026) involved a £2,750.97 loss to a task-based job scam via legitimate money transfer providers. The Ombudsman found the payments were not unusual enough in value, frequency or destination to have obliged the firm to intervene.
These four cases are not upheld and are presented here as examples of the kinds of complaints reaching decision stage, not as evidence of any broader pattern in HSBC UK Bank Plc's handling of complaints.
What the data does and does not show
Veste's figures show that HSBC UK Bank Plc's published-decision uphold rate has declined most quarters and most years across the period examined, from 28.1% in 2022 to 18.8% so far in 2026, and that the most recent 90-day window continues that pattern at 15.9%, down 5.9 percentage points on the prior window. Decision volume fell by 82, or 21.0%, over the same comparison.
What the data cannot show is why. It does not reveal whether complaint referral volumes to the Ombudsman have changed, whether HSBC UK Bank Plc's own complaint handling has changed, or whether the mix of complaint types reaching decision stage has shifted. It also cannot be read as a measure of the total volume of complaints made to HSBC UK Bank Plc, since published Ombudsman decisions are a subset of all complaints, not the whole population. As Veste's methodology notes, firms are recorded under the exact business name attached to each decision, so HSBC UK Bank Plc and HSBC UK Bank PLC, which both appear in the case examples above due to formatting differences in source records, and any other related entity in the same banking group, are not combined into a single group figure.
The wider implication
For anyone tracking HSBC UK Bank Plc's Ombudsman record, the latest quarterly fall in the uphold rate is consistent with, rather than a departure from, a decline that has persisted across the last four full calendar years. The size of the latest window, 308 decisions, is large enough to meet Veste's sampling threshold, but a single quarter's movement should still be read alongside the multi-year series rather than in isolation. The clearer signal in this data is the sustained year-on-year drift downward from 28.1% in 2022 to 18.8% in 2026 so far, not the most recent quarter considered on its own.