A sharp fall, but not an unprecedented one
The uphold rate for investment complaints decided by the Financial Ombudsman fell to 24.5% in the most recent 90-day window, down from 31.9% in the prior window, a drop of 7.4 percentage points. This happened while the number of decisions rose from 312 to 331, an increase of 19 cases, or 6.1%. Both windows meet Veste's minimum sample threshold of 30 decisions, so the comparison is not resting on a handful of cases either side.
On its own, a movement of this size might look like the start of a trend. But the 25-month series covering June 2024 to June 2026 shows that investment uphold rates have been unusually volatile throughout the period, ranging from as low as 17.7% in July 2025 to as high as 43.8% in December 2024. Judged against that backdrop, the current reading of 24.5% sits within the range the product has already visited more than once, rather than marking new territory.
The headline numbers
Across the full period covered by Veste's investment dataset, from April 2013 to June 2026, 14,114 decisions have been published, of which 4,202 were upheld, 1,326 partially upheld and 8,586 not upheld. That produces an overall uphold rate of 34.5% for the product, using the Ombudsman-consistent definition of upheld plus half of partially upheld, divided by total decisions.
That 34.5% headline rate sits above the current 90-day reading of 24.5% and above the corpus-wide baseline uphold rate of 28.8% across all 401,815 published decisions Veste has analysed. Investment complaints have historically run somewhat hotter than the average FOS case, though the most recent quarter has pulled the product's rate below that baseline.
What the monthly series shows
Looking month by month across the 25 months from June 2024 to June 2026, the pattern is one of persistent swings rather than a steady decline. Uphold rates climbed through late 2024, peaking at 43.8% in December 2024 and staying above 42% in January and February 2025, before falling sharply to 17.7% in July 2025. Since then the series has oscillated in a lower band, mostly between 24% and 38%, with the three most recent months, April, May and June 2026, sitting at 24.6%, 24.0% and 25.0% respectively.
Monthly volumes have also varied considerably, from 42 decisions in June 2026 to 211 in March 2026, which is itself a reminder that single-month figures, and by extension quarterly windows, can be sensitive to which cases happened to be published when. A run of three months clustered near 24-25% is more informative than one month alone, but it is still a short window against a series that has moved by more than 20 percentage points in either direction before.
The longer view: yearly figures
Year-on-year figures add useful context. Investment uphold rates by year were 30.1% in 2022, 35.5% in 2023, 28.7% in 2024, 33.2% in 2025, and 28.3% so far in 2026, based on 969, 1,066, 1,161, 1,152 and 610 decisions respectively. There is no straight-line trend here: the rate has moved up and down from one year to the next, with 2026's year-to-date figure of 28.3% broadly similar to 2024's 28.7% and both lower than 2023's 35.5%. The current quarterly dip therefore looks consistent with a product category that has repeatedly cycled between roughly 28% and 36% on an annual basis, rather than evidence of a new, lower baseline.
Firm mix: wide variation, not directly comparable
Veste's top-firms data for investment-related decisions shows uphold rates varying substantially by business name. Barclays Bank Plc recorded a 44.7% uphold rate across 546 decisions, the highest among firms meeting the minimum sample of the businesses listed. Halifax Share Dealing Limited stood at 36.1% across 294 decisions, and Barclays Bank UK PLC at 34.6% across 321 decisions. By contrast, Hargreaves Lansdown Asset Management Limited recorded a markedly lower 13.2% uphold rate across 402 decisions, the lowest of the ten firms listed. Nationwide Building Society sat at 33.7% across 227 decisions, HSBC UK Bank Plc at 31.2% across 245, St. James's Place Wealth Management Plc at 29.8% across 299, Lloyds Bank PLC at 29.5% across 460, Santander UK Plc at 27.9% across 342, and Bank of Scotland Plc at 25.1% across 342.
It is worth noting that Barclays Bank Plc and Barclays Bank UK PLC appear as separate entities in this data. Veste's firm grouping follows the business name recorded on each individual decision, so subsidiaries of the same banking group are counted separately rather than rolled into a single parent figure. The same caution applies to Lloyds Bank PLC and Bank of Scotland Plc, both part of the same wider banking group but listed here as distinct businesses.
This firm-level spread, from 13.2% to 44.7%, is far wider than the 7.4 percentage point movement seen in the latest quarterly window. It suggests that which firms happen to have decisions published in a given quarter could plausibly influence the aggregate investment uphold rate, though Veste's data does not break down the firm composition of the two 90-day windows specifically, so this remains an observation about the scale of firm-level variation rather than a demonstrated explanation for the recent fall.
Related complaint categories
Among related claim categories tracked by Veste, investment mis-selling complaints show a 37.3% uphold rate across 8,061 decisions, higher than the investment product's overall 34.5% rate. General financial advice complaints run at 32.9% across 672 decisions, close to the corpus baseline. Complaints handling failures, a smaller category, show a considerably higher 49.1% uphold rate across 163 decisions, while account closure complaints sit much lower at 14.8% across 355 decisions. These figures describe different, overlapping slices of the Ombudsman's published caseload rather than a breakdown of investment complaints specifically, but they illustrate that uphold rates vary enormously depending on what type of grievance is being decided.
Individual decisions as illustration
Four recent decisions published by the Ombudsman give a sense of the kinds of disputes behind the investment figures, though none should be read as representative of the whole category. On 15 June 2026, a complaint against Trading 212 Limited concerning leveraged and inverse ETFs was not upheld; the Ombudsman found the client's prior trading experience and the risk information provided meant the firm had met its obligations, even though its formal appropriateness test postdated the start of his trading. The same day, a complaint against Ascot Lloyd Limited over advice to invest £310,000 of a £450,000 gift in an onshore investment bond was also not upheld, with the Ombudsman finding the advice suitable for the client's stated objectives and risk profile.
A complaint against Barclays Bank UK PLC concerning a £70,000 investment scam, decided on 12 June 2026, was not upheld; the Ombudsman found that although the bank should have intervened on a £50,000 payment, the investment had appeared legitimate at the time and the customer would likely have proceeded regardless. By contrast, a complaint against Brown Shipley & Co Limited over a discretionary fund management tax timing issue, also decided on 12 June 2026, was upheld in part, with the firm directed to pay £2,208 in redress plus interest, a figure the firm had already proposed, against a client claim of £7,346 in capital gains tax liability that the Ombudsman found was not entirely attributable to the firm's conduct.
These four cases show the range of issues within the investment category, from complex product suitability to fraud liability and tax-related redress calculations. They illustrate how individual outcomes are decided but cannot be used to infer what drove the aggregate quarterly movement.
What the data does not show
Veste's dataset does not identify which specific firms or issue types made up the 331 decisions in the current window or the 312 in the prior one, so it is not possible to say from this data whether the fall in uphold rate reflects a shift in the mix of firms being decided, a change in the types of complaint reaching decision, or genuine variation in how similar complaints were assessed. The monthly series demonstrates that swings of this size, and considerably larger ones, have occurred repeatedly over the past two years without establishing a sustained new trend in either direction.
It is also worth restating that published Ombudsman decisions are not the same population as all complaints made to a firm or across the investment sector. They represent cases that reached a formal published outcome, which is a subset shaped by how complaints are escalated and resolved before that stage.
The practical implication
For anyone tracking Ombudsman outcomes in the investment category, the latest quarter's 24.5% uphold rate is a genuine data point, not noise dismissed out of hand, given both windows clear the minimum sample size. But set against a series that has ranged from 17.7% to 43.8% over 25 months, and annual figures that have themselves cycled between 28.3% and 35.5% since 2022, a single quarterly fall of 7.4 percentage points is best treated as part of that established volatility until further quarters either confirm or reverse the movement.
Methodology
This analysis covers 14,114 published Financial Ombudsman decisions in the Investment product category, spanning first-seen 3 April 2013 to last-seen 15 June 2026. Comparisons used are: a 90-day period-on-period window (current: 331 decisions, prior: 312 decisions, both meeting Veste's minimum sample of 30), year-on-year figures for 2022-2026, a 25-month trend series from June 2024 to June 2026, and the corpus-wide baseline uphold rate across 401,815 decisions. The uphold rate is calculated as (upheld + 0.5 × partially upheld) / total, consistent with published FOS statistics. Windows are anchored to the newest decision date in the corpus (15 June 2026), not to the article's publication date, because the Ombudsman publishes decisions in arrears. Firms are grouped by the raw business name recorded on each decision; subsidiaries of the same banking group are not combined. Published decisions are not the same population as all complaints made to a firm, and the data does not include a firm-by-firm breakdown of the two comparison windows.