A falling uphold rate on a growing caseload
In the most recent 90-day window measured by Veste, the Financial Ombudsman published 134 decisions involving Moneybarn No. 1 Limited, up from 79 in the preceding 90-day window, an increase of 55 decisions, or 69.6%. Over the same comparison, the uphold rate fell from 14.6% to 6.7%, a drop of 7.9 percentage points. Both windows meet Veste's minimum sample threshold of 30 decisions, so the comparison is not resting on a handful of cases either side.
On its own, a falling uphold rate alongside a rising caseload could be read two ways: either a larger volume of complaints is diluting the proportion that succeed, or something about the mix of complaints reaching decision has changed. The data available to Veste does not establish which explanation applies, and it would be wrong to infer a change in lending or complaint-handling practice from the uphold rate alone.
The numbers in context
Across the full published history captured by Veste, Moneybarn No. 1 Limited has 1,419 decisions on record, running from the first decision on 5 December 2013 to the most recent on 15 June 2026. Of those, 311 were upheld and 70 were partially upheld, against 1,038 not upheld, producing an overall uphold rate of 24.4% using Veste's definition (upheld cases plus half of partially upheld cases, divided by the total). That compares with a uphold rate of 28.8% across the entire corpus of 401,815 decisions Veste has analysed, so Moneybarn's all-time rate sits a little below the wider baseline.
The recent 90-day figure of 6.7% is well below both Moneybarn's own long-run average and the corpus baseline. Whether that reflects a genuine shift in outcomes or short-term variation in a volatile monthly series is best answered by looking at the trend over a longer run of months.
What the monthly series shows
Veste's monthly series for Moneybarn covers 25 months, from June 2024 to June 2026. It is a noisy run. Monthly uphold rates over that period swing widely: from a low of 0.0% in May 2025 and again in February 2026, up to 36.4% in October 2024 and 35.7% in November 2024. Monthly totals are similarly uneven, ranging from single figures (5 decisions in June 2026, 9 in April 2025) up to a marked spike of 113 decisions in March 2026, by far the largest single month in the series.
That March 2026 spike is worth dwelling on. With 113 decisions and only 9 upheld, the month posted a uphold rate of 8.0%, similar in character to the low rates seen in the following months (3.4% in April 2026, 9.4% in May 2026). The months either side of the recent 90-day window, then, are consistent with the period comparison: decision volumes have risen substantially since late 2025, and the associated uphold rates have generally sat below the levels seen through most of 2024 and early 2025.
Before that, the pattern was different. Uphold rates in the second half of 2024 were frequently in the 25% to 36% range (August 2024: 26.3%; September 2024: 23.3%; October 2024: 36.4%; November 2024: 35.7%), before beginning a gradual decline through 2025 that continued into 2026. September 2025 (46 decisions, 8.7% upheld) marks an earlier point where a jump in volume coincided with a lower rate, suggesting the recent 90-day figures are part of a longer-running pattern rather than an isolated event.
The annual picture
Veste's year-on-year figures reinforce this. In 2022, Moneybarn's uphold rate was 37.5% across 152 decisions, the highest annual rate in the series supplied. It fell to 16.3% in 2023 (187 decisions), rose slightly to 19.7% in 2024 (254 decisions), fell again to 17.0% in 2025 (277 decisions), and stands at 9.3% so far in 2026 across 209 decisions. Every one of these annual figures meets Veste's minimum sample size.
Taken together, the annual series shows uphold rates declining in four of the last five years measured, from 37.5% in 2022 to 9.3% in the year to date in 2026, while annual decision volumes have generally risen, from 152 in 2022 to 277 in 2025. The 2026 figure is a partial year, so it should not be treated as a like-for-like comparison with the completed years, but its uphold rate is consistent with the direction seen in the two most recent full years.
This longer view matters for interpreting the 90-day comparison. A 7.9 percentage point fall over 90 days sits inside a trend that has been visible for several years, rather than representing a sudden break from prior form. That does not make the underlying causes clear, but it does mean the recent figures are not statistically anomalous against Moneybarn's own recent history.
What individual decisions illustrate
Published decisions can help illustrate the kinds of complaints reaching the Ombudsman about this firm, though a handful of examples cannot establish a trend on their own.
Three decisions dated 15 June 2026 and one dated 9 June 2026, supplied to Veste, concerned conditional sale agreements for vehicle finance. In one, a complainant argued that Moneybarn's affordability checks before a £12,995 car purchase in May 2022 were inadequate; the Ombudsman agreed the checks fell short but found that more thorough checks would still have shown the £455.41 monthly payments were affordable, and did not uphold the complaint, while accepting Moneybarn's offer to remove a default and pay £250 compensation over a separate issue with voluntary termination handling. A similar pattern appeared in a case involving a £7,840 agreement from April 2018, where the Ombudsman found checks were not proportionate given the complainant's credit history but that better checks would still have shown the payments affordable, and the complaint was not upheld. A third, involving a £5,994 van purchased in March 2025, was upheld: the Ombudsman found the vehicle was not of satisfactory quality when supplied, after a significant mechanical fault emerged within four months, and directed Moneybarn to end the agreement, refund associated costs, pay £250 compensation and remove adverse credit file information. A fourth case concerning a car finance agreement from December 2020 was not upheld after the Ombudsman found Moneybarn had reasonably relied on payslips that appeared genuine, even though the complainant later alleged they had been fabricated by a third party.
These four cases show the range of issues that can arise in motor finance complaints handled by this Ombudsman, from affordability assessment to vehicle quality under the Consumer Rights Act 2015, but they are illustrations of case types rather than evidence of how the broader caseload was decided.
Category context
Moneybarn's complaints sit within a wider set of complaint categories tracked by Veste. Irresponsible lending complaints across the corpus have a uphold rate of 16.6% across 586 decisions, a category directly relevant to several of the illustrative cases above. Goods and services complaints under Section 75 run considerably higher, at 39.3% across 517 decisions, while motor finance commission complaints concerning discretionary commission arrangements show a uphold rate of 0.0% across 110 decisions. Mortgage administration and arrears handling complaints sit at 16.7% across 54 decisions. These figures describe categories across the whole corpus, not Moneybarn specifically, but they give a sense of where irresponsible lending complaints, the type most visible in Moneybarn's illustrative decisions, sit relative to other complaint types the Ombudsman handles.
What this data does and does not show
Veste's dataset records published Ombudsman decisions, which is not the same population as every complaint made to Moneybarn. Firms are also counted by the exact business name recorded on each decision, so any subsidiary of a wider banking or lending group would appear separately in Veste's figures rather than being combined with a parent company; this affects how firm-level figures should be read generally, though the evidence supplied here relates to a single named entity.
The fall in uphold rate coincides with a rise in decision volume, but coincidence between two trends does not establish that one caused the other. The data supplied does not include reasons for the change in either volume or rate beyond what appears in the individual case summaries, and no claim about Moneybarn's underlying lending or complaint-handling practices can be drawn from the uphold rate movement alone.
Conclusion
The 7.9 percentage point fall in Moneybarn's uphold rate between the two most recent 90-day windows is real and measured against samples large enough to be meaningful by Veste's threshold, unlike many single-month figures in the series which are too small to characterise reliably. But it is not an isolated event. It sits within an annual uphold rate that has fallen from 37.5% in 2022 to 9.3% so far in 2026, alongside rising annual decision volumes, and within a monthly series where rates below 10% have appeared repeatedly since autumn 2025. For readers tracking this firm, the more useful takeaway is not the size of the latest 90-day move but the multi-year direction it continues: more decisions being published, and a lower proportion of them being upheld, over a period spanning several years.