A fall in upheld complaints, alongside more of them
In the most recent 90-day window tracked by Veste, the Financial Ombudsman published 385 decisions on investment products, of which the uphold rate stood at 26.5%. In the preceding 90-day window there were 303 decisions and an uphold rate of 32.0%. That is a fall of 5.5 percentage points in the uphold rate, occurring at the same time as a rise in volume of 82 decisions, or 27.1%. More decisions, fewer upheld in proportion.
Both windows clear Veste's minimum sample threshold of 30 decisions, so this is not a case of a handful of outlying cases skewing a tiny sample. It is a comparison between two reasonably sized batches of published decisions. Whether a 5.5 point shift is meaningful, or simply the kind of variation this series produces most months, is the question worth examining before drawing conclusions.
The headline numbers
Across the full run of data Veste holds for investment products, stretching from the first decision recorded on 3 April 2013 to the most recent on 22 May 2026, there have been 14,058 decisions. Of these, 4,191 were upheld, 1,318 were partially upheld and 8,549 were not upheld, giving an overall uphold rate of 34.5%. That sits above the corpus-wide baseline uphold rate of 28.9% across all 399,660 decisions Veste has analysed spanning all products and firms, so investment complaints have historically been upheld somewhat more often than the average complaint reaching the Ombudsman.
The uphold rate is calculated by Veste as (upheld plus half of partially upheld) divided by total decisions, which is why a partially upheld outcome contributes weight to the rate without counting as a full uphold.
Measured against that long-run average of 34.5%, the current 90-day uphold rate of 26.5% looks low. Measured against the corpus-wide baseline of 28.9%, it looks low too, though less dramatically so. The prior 90-day window, at 32.0%, sat closer to the investment product's own long-run average.
What the monthly series shows
Veste's monthly trend for investment decisions covers 25 months, from May 2024 to May 2026. Over that run the uphold rate has moved between a low of 14.0% in May 2024 and a high of 43.8% in December 2024, with volumes ranging from 25 decisions in the quietest month to 211 in March 2026.
The pattern is not one of steady decline followed by a sudden drop. Rather, it oscillates. December 2024 (43.8%), January 2025 (42.4%) and February 2025 (42.2%) formed a run of elevated uphold rates on volumes of 112, 99 and 90 decisions respectively. That run was followed by a fall to 17.7% in July 2025 on 99 decisions, before climbing back towards 38.0% in October 2025. The most recent two months in the series, April 2026 and May 2026, recorded uphold rates of 24.6% and 22.6% respectively, on 57 and 82 decisions. Those two months sit at the lower end of the 25-month range, but they are not without precedent: May 2024 recorded a lower rate still, at 14.0%, albeit on a much smaller sample of 25 decisions.
Seen against this backdrop, the fall captured in the period comparison looks less like an isolated cliff-edge and more like the current position within a series that has repeatedly swung between roughly 15% and roughly 44% over two years. That does not mean the recent fall is meaningless, but it does mean readers should be cautious about treating any single two-window comparison as the start of a durable trend.
The annual picture
Veste's year-on-year figures reinforce the sense of an uphold rate that moves around rather than trending consistently in one direction. In 2022 the annual uphold rate for investment decisions was 30.1% on 969 decisions. It rose to 35.5% in 2023 on 1,066 decisions, fell back to 28.7% in 2024 on 1,161 decisions, rose again to 33.2% in 2025 on 1,152 decisions, and for 2026 so far stands at 28.4% on 554 decisions. Each of these years exceeds Veste's minimum sample of 30, so the annual rate is a reasonably robust reading of underlying decision-making at yearly resolution.
The 2026 year-to-date figure of 28.4% is close to the corpus-wide baseline of 28.9%, and not far from the current 90-day figure of 26.5%. Read together, these figures suggest that 2026 has, so far, run somewhat below the elevated uphold rates seen in 2023 and 2025, but not dramatically below the longer average once the full calendar year is considered rather than just the most recent quarter.
Firm mix: a caveat before any comparison
Veste's top firm table for investment decisions lists ten firms that each meet the minimum sample of 30 decisions. Barclays Bank Plc recorded the highest uphold rate among them, at 44.7% across 546 decisions (211 upheld, 66 partially upheld, 269 not upheld). St. James's Place Wealth Management Plc recorded 29.9% across 298 decisions, with a comparatively high proportion of partial upholds, 58 of the 298. Hargreaves Lansdown Asset Management Limited recorded the lowest uphold rate in the table, 13.3% across 400 decisions. Lloyds Bank PLC stood at 29.5% across 460 decisions, Santander UK Plc at 27.9% across 342, Bank of Scotland Plc at 25.1% across 342, Barclays Bank UK PLC at 34.8% across 319, Halifax Share Dealing Limited at 36.2% across 293, HSBC UK Bank Plc at 30.8% across 242, and Nationwide Building Society at 33.7% across 227.
A structural point matters here. Firms are counted in this dataset by the exact business name recorded on each decision, so Barclays Bank Plc and Barclays Bank UK PLC appear as two separate entries rather than being combined into one banking group figure, even though they sit within the same wider group. The same caution would apply to any other group with more than one regulated entity appearing in the data. This is a feature of how the underlying decisions are published and recorded, not a Veste judgement about corporate structure.
None of the firm-level figures above are drawn from the current 90-day window specifically; they represent each firm's overall totals in the investment product dataset. Veste does not have a breakdown showing which firms contributed to the 82-decision increase in the latest window, so it would not be accurate to attribute the fall in the uphold rate to any single firm's decisions without that evidence.
What might be contributing, and what cannot be said
The related complaint categories give some texture to where investment complaints originate. Investment mis-selling is the largest category Veste tracks within this space, with 8,043 decisions and an uphold rate of 37.3%, above both the product-level average and the corpus baseline. Service failures generally show 1,694 decisions at a 32.0% uphold rate, and account administration errors show 1,385 decisions at 29.0%. General financial advice complaints, 665 decisions, sit at 32.8%. Complaints handling failures, a smaller category at 162 decisions, carry a notably higher uphold rate of 49.1%, though this reflects failures in handling complaints rather than the underlying investment advice itself.
Veste's data does not identify which of these categories drove the increase in volume or the fall in uphold rate in the latest 90-day window, because the category breakdown supplied is corpus-wide rather than window-specific. It would therefore be speculation to assert that, for example, a rise in mis-selling claims or a rise in execution-only platform disputes explains the recent movement. What can be said is that investment mis-selling is both the largest category and one with an uphold rate above the product average, so movements in that category's volume would have disproportionate influence on the product-level figure if they occurred, but Veste's evidence does not show whether they did.
Individual decisions as illustration
Four recent decisions, all dated 22 May 2026, give a flavour of the kinds of disputes reaching the Ombudsman under the investment heading, though none should be read as representative of a trend given the small number involved.
One case, against Ascot Lloyd Limited, was upheld. A 75-year-old recently widowed retiree had been advised in 2017 to consolidate five ISAs into an aggressive, discretionary fund managed AIM ISA for inheritance tax planning. The ombudsman found the advice unsuitable given his medium risk profile and the scheduled increase in the inheritance tax threshold, which would have reduced the tax benefit the advice was designed to secure. The firm was required to compensate based on the difference between the AIM ISA's actual value and its notional value had funds remained with previous providers, plus £200 for distress.
Three other cases were not upheld. A complaint against Barclays Bank UK PLC concerning a £277,850 investment in a holiday lodge scheme was rejected on the grounds that the loss was suffered by the complainants' limited company rather than personally, and that there was insufficient evidence of an authorised push payment scam. Two separate complaints against Robinhood U.K. Ltd, concerning a $268,207 investment in shares that fell 94% amid an alleged pump-and-dump scheme, and a stop-limit order that failed to execute during a share price collapse of over 90%, were both rejected on the basis that the platform operated on an execution-only basis and the losses arose from third-party conduct or market mechanics outside the firm's control.
These four decisions illustrate the range of issues the Ombudsman considers under the investment heading, from unsuitable advice to platform responsibility in fast-moving markets. They are examples, not evidence of a broader pattern, given the dataset supplied covers only four such decisions on this date.
What the data does and does not show
The data shows a real fall in the uphold rate between two 90-day windows, occurring alongside rising volume, and both windows meet Veste's sample threshold. It also shows that this level of movement, roughly five to six percentage points, has occurred repeatedly across the 25-month monthly series, in both directions. The data does not show which firms or complaint categories drove the specific change in the latest window, and it does not establish that investment advice or products have become less reliable. Published Ombudsman decisions are also not the same population as all complaints made to firms; many complaints are resolved or withdrawn before reaching a published decision, and the mix of cases that do reach a decision can itself vary between periods for reasons unconnected to underlying firm behaviour.
The useful takeaway
For anyone tracking investment complaint outcomes, the most useful reading of this data is not that something has gone wrong in the past 90 days, but that the uphold rate for this product has genuine month-to-month and window-to-window volatility, with swings of similar size occurring repeatedly since May 2024. A single 5.5 point fall, on a rising decision count, is consistent with that established pattern rather than a clear break from it. The annual figures, sitting between 28.4% and 35.5% across the five years supplied, offer a steadier benchmark than any single quarter, and the current year's rate of 28.4% remains within that established range.