A falling uphold rate, and fewer cases to go with it
In the most recent 90-day window covered by Veste's analysis, the Financial Ombudsman upheld or partially upheld motor insurance complaints at a rate of 26.9%, against 527 published decisions. In the prior 90-day window, the uphold rate stood at 33.3% across 585 decisions. That is a fall of 6.4 percentage points in the uphold rate, alongside a drop of 58 decisions, a change of -9.9% in volume.
Both windows comfortably clear Veste's minimum sample threshold of 30 decisions, so this is not a case of a handful of outlier rulings swinging a tiny sample. The comparison rests on genuinely comparable-sized periods, which makes the direction of travel worth examining rather than dismissing as statistical noise.
What the monthly series shows
Veste's monthly trend data, covering 25 months from June 2024 to June 2026, gives a fuller picture than the two-window comparison alone. Motor insurance uphold rates in mid-2024 sat comfortably above 40%, peaking at 52.1% in July 2024 on 141 decisions. From late 2024 into 2025 the rate drifted down through the 40% and then the high-30% range. By January 2026 it was 36.7%, then 32.5% in February, 32.2% in March, before falling further to 24.5% in April, 24.6% in May and 22.5% in June 2026, the most recent month in the series.
Decision volumes have also fallen in the same period. March 2026 recorded 255 decisions, the highest monthly total in the recent run, but April dropped to 141, May to 167 and June to 102, the lowest single-month total anywhere in the 25-month series. The combination of a shrinking uphold rate and shrinking volume in the same months is consistent with the period-on-period comparison, which draws on decisions from across this same recent stretch.
This is a gradual decline stretched across roughly a year and a half rather than a single-month shock. That pattern of a sustained downward drift, rather than one anomalous month, is what makes the period comparison worth taking seriously, even though the absolute numbers involved each month are modest.
The longer-term picture
Looking year by year, the uphold rate for motor insurance has moved substantially over time. In 2022 it was 34.0% across 1,595 decisions. It rose to 43.3% in 2023 across 2,071 decisions, and further to 46.3% in 2024 across 2,245 decisions, the highest annual rate in this run. In 2025 it fell back to 39.3% across 2,242 decisions. So far in 2026 it stands at 29.9% across 1,072 decisions, all of these annual figures meeting Veste's minimum sample size.
Set against that longer run, the current 2026 year-to-date rate of 29.9% is the lowest annual figure since at least 2022, and well below the 46.3% recorded in 2024. The recent 90-day figure of 26.9% is lower still, suggesting the decline has continued or accelerated within 2026 itself rather than levelling off. Against Veste's baseline uphold rate across the entire corpus of published Ombudsman decisions, 28.8%, the current motor insurance rate of 26.9% now sits marginally below the all-product average, a reversal from earlier years when motor insurance ran notably above it.
Firm mix: wide variation, no combined group figures
Veste's data on individual firms shows substantial variation in uphold rates within the motor insurance category, all drawn from the same underlying corpus and all meeting the minimum sample size for reliable comparison. Admiral Insurance Company Limited recorded an uphold rate of 34.2% across 1,685 decisions, while a separately listed entity, Admiral Insurance (Gibraltar) Limited, recorded 44.3% across 1,142 decisions. Advantage Insurance Company Limited stood at 39.2% across 1,534 decisions, and esure Insurance Limited at 40.5% across 1,308 decisions.
At the other end of the range, Liverpool Victoria Insurance Company Limited recorded 20.4% across 905 decisions, the lowest uphold rate among the ten firms with the largest published decision volumes. UK Insurance Limited stood at 24.4% across 1,205 decisions, and a separately recorded entity, U K Insurance Limited, at 28.2% across 1,132 decisions. Aviva Insurance Limited recorded 24.5% across 1,196 decisions. AXA Insurance UK Plc stood at 31.0% across 851 decisions, and Ageas Insurance Limited at 27.2% across 784 decisions.
It is worth noting explicitly, as Veste's methodology requires, that firms are counted by the exact business name recorded on each published decision. Where a banking or insurance group operates more than one regulated entity, such as the two Admiral entries and the two UK Insurance entries above, those entities are not combined into a single group figure. A reader comparing group-level performance needs to bear that separation in mind.
Because this firm-level data covers the full corpus period rather than only the most recent 90-day window, it cannot on its own explain the recent fall in the overall motor insurance uphold rate. It does, however, establish that uphold rates vary widely across firms handling large volumes of motor insurance decisions, from around one in five decisions upheld or partially upheld at the lowest end to well over two in five at the highest.
What might be driving the fall, and what remains unclear
Veste's data allows us to observe the pattern but not to establish its cause. Two explanations are consistent with what has been supplied, and neither excludes the other. First, if the mix of firms represented in the most recent 90-day window shifted towards those with lower typical uphold rates, such as Liverpool Victoria Insurance Company Limited or Aviva Insurance Limited, that alone could push the aggregate rate down without any individual firm's practice changing. Second, the nature of the complaints reaching a published decision may have shifted, for instance towards types of dispute where the Ombudsman's supporting evidence more often favours the insurer.
Veste's related-category data offers some further context without proving a cause. Motor insurance, claim handling complaints, a subset of the broader motor insurance category, show an uphold rate of 26.6% across 6,755 decisions, close to the overall recent motor insurance figure. Motor insurance, total loss valuation complaints show a higher uphold rate of 37.0% across 2,814 decisions. If the mix of published decisions in the most recent window leaned more heavily towards claim handling disputes than valuation disputes, that would be consistent with a lower blended uphold rate, though Veste's data does not break down the recent 90-day window by these subcategories, so this remains an observation about the wider corpus rather than a demonstrated explanation for the recent fall.
What can be said with more confidence is that the fall is not confined to a single month. The steady decline visible from March 2026 (32.2%) through April (24.5%), May (24.6%) and June (22.5%) points to something more sustained than a one-off cluster of unusual decisions.
Individual decisions as illustration
Veste's dataset includes several recent motor insurance decisions that illustrate the range of issues reaching the Ombudsman, though none of them should be read as representative of a broader trend on its own. In one case decided in June 2026, AXA Insurance UK Plc was found to have acted reasonably in defending a false third-party claim against a policyholder's motor policy, and the Ombudsman was satisfied its No Claims Discount communication was adequate; the complaint was not upheld. In a separate June 2026 decision, Tesco Underwriting Limited's handling of a non-fault accident claim, including its preference for a lower repair estimate over the policyholder's own engineer's figure and its approach to storage charge reimbursement, was found to be fair, and that complaint was also not upheld. In a third, AXA Insurance UK Plc was again found to have acted fairly on liability, though the Ombudsman noted the insurer could have communicated better about the reduced chances of a successful third-party recovery; £350 already offered in compensation was judged appropriate.
By contrast, a complaint against Tradex Insurance Company PLC was upheld. The insurer had valued a stolen campervan at £6,805 using three motor trade guides and offered £889.94 for modifications. The Ombudsman found that supporting adverts showed comparable vehicles selling for more, and ordered Tradex to settle on the highest of the three guide valuations, £7,488, plus a subsequently revised modifications offer of £3,289.66, with 8% simple interest. These four cases sit within the same general period covered by the recent fall in the aggregate uphold rate, but they cannot, individually or collectively, explain a shift measured across hundreds of decisions.
What the data does not tell us
Veste's analysis is built entirely from published Ombudsman decisions, which is a different population from the full range of complaints made to insurers. Many complaints are resolved by firms directly, or do not proceed to a published Ombudsman decision, so this data cannot be read as a complete account of consumer experience with motor insurers. Nor does a lower uphold rate demonstrate that insurers have improved their underlying claims handling; it may equally reflect changes in which types of dispute are escalated to the Ombudsman, or changes in the mix of firms and case types reaching a decision. The data also cannot confirm whether the fall in decision volume, from 585 to 527 across the two 90-day windows, reflects fewer complaints being referred, a backlog effect, or simply the timing of when decisions are published.
The implication
For anyone tracking motor insurance complaint outcomes, the headline point is that the uphold rate has now fallen for several consecutive months and sits close to, or just below, the wider baseline uphold rate for all Financial Ombudsman decisions. That is a genuine change from the position in 2023 and 2024, when motor insurance ran well above that baseline. Whether this reflects better claims handling, a changing complaint mix, or something else in the pipeline of what reaches a published decision is not something this data can settle. What it does support is a continued, month-on-month watch on both the volume and the outcome of motor insurance decisions, given how much movement has already occurred within a comparatively short span.