A falling uphold rate, but on a much bigger caseload
In the most recent 90-day window tracked by Veste, the Financial Ombudsman published 162 decisions naming Moneybarn No. 1 Limited, up from 78 in the prior 90-day window, an increase of 84 cases, or 107.7%. Over the same comparison, the uphold rate fell from 16% to 6.5%, a drop of 9.5 percentage points. Both windows meet Veste's minimum sample threshold of 30 decisions, so the comparison is not resting on a handful of cases either side.
The uphold rate used throughout this analysis follows Veste's standard definition: (upheld decisions plus half of partially upheld decisions) divided by total decisions. That formula gives partial upholds half weight, reflecting that they represent a split outcome rather than a full win for either party.
The numbers behind the headline
Across the full published history captured by Veste, Moneybarn No. 1 Limited has featured in 1,403 decisions dating back to 5 December 2013, with an overall uphold rate of 24.5% (309 upheld, 69 partially upheld, 1,025 not upheld). That is below the corpus-wide baseline uphold rate of 28.9% across the 398,383 decisions in Veste's full database, so on the all-time figures Moneybarn's complaints have historically been upheld somewhat less often than the average across all firms and products in the dataset.
The monthly trend, spanning the 25 months from May 2024 to May 2026, shows how volatile the picture has been even before the latest quarterly comparison. Monthly totals ranged from as few as 9 decisions (April 2025) to a sharp spike of 113 in March 2026, the single largest month in the series. Monthly uphold rates swung widely too: from 0% in May 2025 and again in February 2026, up to 36.4% in October 2024. That kind of month-to-month swing, on volumes often below 30, is exactly the sort of noise that makes any single month unreliable as a signal on its own.
What stands out in the more recent months is a sustained run of low uphold rates alongside rising volume. September 2025 recorded 46 decisions at an 8.7% uphold rate. October 2025 saw 21 decisions at 7.1%. November 2025 brought 34 decisions at 10.3%. Then March 2026's spike to 113 decisions came with an uphold rate of just 8%, and April 2026's 29 decisions produced a 3.4% uphold rate, the lowest monthly figure in the series alongside May 2025 and February 2026's zero readings. The most recent month in the series, May 2026, shows only 5 decisions at a 10% uphold rate, too small a sample to draw any conclusion from on its own.
The longer-term picture: a multi-year decline
Veste's year-on-year figures show a clearer trajectory than any single quarter. In 2022, Moneybarn's annual uphold rate stood at 37.5% across 152 decisions. It fell to 16.3% in 2023 (187 decisions), rose slightly to 19.7% in 2024 (254 decisions), fell again to 17% in 2025 (277 decisions), and stands at 8.8% so far in 2026 across 193 decisions. All five years meet Veste's minimum sample threshold, so each figure can be treated as a reasonably stable annual estimate rather than a product of a handful of cases.
That progression, from 37.5% in 2022 down to 8.8% in the year to date, is a substantially larger and more sustained movement than the 9.5 percentage point quarterly swing that prompted this analysis. It suggests the recent 90-day drop is not an isolated blip but part of a longer downward trend that has been running for several years, even though the pace and shape of that decline has not been smooth: 2024's figure was actually higher than 2023's before resuming its fall.
What the case types show
Veste's related-category data, covering complaint types across the wider corpus rather than Moneybarn specifically, gives some useful context for the kinds of issues that recur in the sampled Moneybarn decisions below. Irresponsible lending complaints across the full 398,383-decision corpus have an uphold rate of 16.6% across 580 decisions. Motor finance commission complaints, a category specifically relevant to car finance providers, show a 0% uphold rate across 105 decisions in Veste's data. Goods and services complaints under Section 75 show a considerably higher uphold rate of 39.3% across 513 decisions, though this category spans many firms and product types beyond motor finance and is not specific to Moneybarn.
These figures describe the broader corpus, not Moneybarn's individual case mix, and should not be read as explaining Moneybarn's specific rate. But they illustrate that irresponsible lending and motor finance commission, two issue types that appear repeatedly in the Moneybarn decisions examined below, are categories where upholds are less common across the market as a whole than in some other complaint types.
Individual decisions as illustration
Four recent decisions naming Moneybarn No. 1 Limited, all published in early May 2026, illustrate the range of issues being decided rather than proving any pattern.
In one case (DRN-6335624), decided on 11 May 2026 and partially upheld, a complainant disputed charges of £2,099.64 following the voluntary termination of a car finance agreement after a mechanical fault. The ombudsman removed unsupported bodywork charges but upheld the mechanical repair and diagnostic costs, leaving the complainant liable for £1,779.49 and ordering Moneybarn to amend her credit file.
In a second (DRN-6329949), decided 7 May 2026 and not upheld, a complainant argued Moneybarn had not carried out adequate affordability checks before a March 2019 conditional sale agreement. The ombudsman agreed the checks fell short of what was proportionate given her credit history, but found no clear evidence that fuller checks would have shown the lending was unaffordable, and so did not uphold the complaint.
A third (DRN-4996870), also decided 7 May 2026 and not upheld, concerned a £10,048 car loan and an undisclosed £775 commission paid to a broker. Applying the Supreme Court's Hopcraft test, the ombudsman found the fixed commission, under 8% of the amount borrowed, was not discretionary, was not high relative to the cost of credit, and involved no commercial tie between broker and lender, so it did not render the relationship unfair.
A fourth (DRN-6248967), decided 7 May 2026 and not upheld, involved a default registered after a voluntary termination left an outstanding liability of £3,142.14. The ombudsman found Moneybarn had shown forbearance, communicated terms clearly and offered payment plans, even though its complaint handling was described as poor, and did not consider the default unfair.
Three of these four recent examples were not upheld and one was partially upheld, consistent with the low uphold rates seen in the monthly data for early 2026, though four cases cannot establish a pattern on their own.
What the data does and does not show
The data shows that Moneybarn No. 1 Limited's uphold rate, calculated from published Financial Ombudsman decisions, has fallen substantially since 2022 and that the most recent quarter continued that direction with a 9.5 percentage point drop alongside a more than doubling of case volume. It shows the current annual figure of 8.8% for 2026 to date is well below the firm's own 2022 figure of 37.5% and below the 24.5% rate across its full published history since 2013, and below the 28.9% baseline across Veste's entire corpus of decisions.
What it does not show is why. Published decisions are not the same population as all complaints made to the firm; many complaints are resolved before reaching the Ombudsman, or are decided but not published, or are still in progress. A falling uphold rate could reflect firmer initial checks and complaint handling by Moneybarn, changes in the types of cases being referred to the Ombudsman, tightened or loosened ombudsman interpretation of tests such as Hopcraft on commission, or shifts in which cases claims management companies choose to pursue. Veste's data cannot distinguish between these explanations. It is also worth noting, as the four May 2026 examples show, that even not-upheld decisions can record findings that a firm's checks were not fully proportionate, without that leading to an uphold if the complainant cannot show a different outcome would have resulted.
Firms are counted in this data by the name recorded on each decision. Moneybarn No. 1 Limited is treated separately from any related entities that might exist under a different registered name, and this analysis makes no claim about any wider corporate group.
The implication for anyone tracking this data
The scale of the volume increase, decisions more than doubling between the prior and current 90-day windows, is probably the more useful figure here for anyone monitoring Moneybarn's regulatory footprint, because it is a large, unambiguous change. The rate movement, while real and measured on adequately sized samples in both windows, sits within a pattern of considerable month-to-month volatility already visible across the 25-month trend, where single months have swung between 0% and 36.4%. Readers should treat the quarterly rate change as consistent with, rather than proof of, the longer downward trend that Veste's year-on-year figures show running from 2022 through to 2026 year-to-date.