A sharp fall, but not an isolated one
Over the 90 days to the newest decision in Veste's corpus, the Financial Ombudsman's published uphold rate for motor insurance complaints stood at 26.9%, down from 33.3% in the preceding 90-day window. That is a fall of 6.4 percentage points. The number of decisions published also fell, from 585 in the prior window to 527 in the latest one, a drop of 58 decisions, or 9.9%.
Both windows comfortably clear Veste's minimum sample threshold of 30 decisions, so this is not a case of a handful of rulings swinging a tiny sample. But a fall of this size over a single 90-day comparison should still be read alongside the longer run of monthly data, because a single period-on-period movement can reflect timing of publication as much as any change in how complaints are being decided.
The numbers in context
Across the full motor insurance dataset, which spans decisions from April 2013 to June 2026, Veste has recorded 24,036 decisions with an outcome. Of these, 6,827 were upheld, 2,990 were partially upheld and 14,219 were not upheld, giving an overall uphold rate of 34.6% across the entire period. That is above the uphold rate for the whole Financial Ombudsman corpus of 401,815 decisions with an outcome, which stands at 28.8%. Motor insurance, in other words, has historically run somewhat hotter than the average product line, though the gap has narrowed sharply in the most recent data, as set out below.
The monthly series covers 25 months, from June 2024 to June 2026. It shows the uphold rate moving from 0.458 in June 2024 up to a peak of 0.521 in July 2024, before drifting down through most of 2025 and falling more steeply in the first half of 2026. By April 2026 the monthly uphold rate had fallen to 0.245 on 141 decisions, followed by 0.246 in May on 167 decisions and 0.225 in June on just 102 decisions. That final month is the smallest of the entire 25-month run and should be treated as provisional and possibly incomplete, given that Financial Ombudsman publication lags behind decision dates.
The longer run: uphold rates have been falling for two years
The year-on-year figures reinforce the picture that the drop is not confined to the latest quarter. In 2024, motor insurance decisions ran at an uphold rate of 46.3% across 2,245 decisions. In 2025 that fell to 39.3% across 2,242 decisions. So far in 2026, on 1,072 decisions, the rate stands at 29.9%. Going back further, 2023 recorded a rate of 43.3% on 2,071 decisions, and 2022 recorded 34.0% on 1,595 decisions. All five years meet Veste's minimum sample size for reporting.
Read together, these figures describe a decline that has been running for more than a year, not a single-quarter anomaly. The uphold rate has fallen in every calendar year since 2024, and the pace of decline appears to have picked up in 2026. Whether that reflects changes in the mix of complaints being escalated to the Ombudsman, changes in how firms are handling claims before a complaint reaches that stage, or some other factor is not something the data can settle. Correlation between falling volume and falling uphold rate is visible in the numbers; a causal explanation is not something Veste's dataset can support on its own.
Firm mix: wide variation, but grouped by name as published
Veste's dataset counts firms by the exact business name recorded on each Financial Ombudsman decision. This matters for motor insurance because several large banking and insurance groups appear more than once under related but distinct legal names. UK Insurance Limited and U K Insurance Limited, for example, are recorded separately, as are Admiral Insurance Company Limited and Admiral Insurance (Gibraltar) Limited. These are not combined into a single parent-group figure, and Veste has not attempted to merge them.
Among the ten firms with sufficient published decisions to report, uphold rates across the full history range widely. Admiral Insurance (Gibraltar) Limited shows the highest rate among this group at 44.3% across 1,142 decisions. esure Insurance Limited follows at 40.5% across 1,308 decisions, and Advantage Insurance Company Limited at 39.2% across 1,534 decisions. At the other end, Liverpool Victoria Insurance Company Limited records the lowest rate among the ten at 20.4% across 905 decisions, with UK Insurance Limited at 24.4% across 1,205 decisions and Aviva Insurance Limited at 24.5% across 1,196 decisions. Admiral Insurance Company Limited sits closer to the middle at 34.2% across 1,685 decisions, the largest single volume in the group. AXA Insurance UK Plc records 31.0% across 851 decisions, U K Insurance Limited 28.2% across 1,132 decisions, and Ageas Insurance Limited 27.2% across 784 decisions.
These are lifetime figures across the full period covered by Veste's data, not figures restricted to the recent 90-day window, and none of them should be read as an explanation for the latest quarterly movement on their own. What they do show is that the 34.6% overall motor insurance uphold rate sits within a spread that runs from roughly one-fifth to nearly one-half depending on the firm, so the market-wide figure conceals considerable variation underneath it.
What might be driving the fall, and what is only illustration
The supplied case examples cannot establish a trend on their own, but they illustrate the kinds of disputes making up the current caseload. Three of the four most recent examples in Veste's dataset, all decided on 15 June 2026, were not upheld. One involved a policyholder who complained that AXA Insurance UK Plc delayed resolving a false third-party claim and gave misleading information about his No Claims Discount; the Ombudsman found AXA had investigated reasonably and communicated clearly, and concluded much of the complainant's frustration stemmed from the third party's claim rather than AXA's handling. A second, against Tesco Underwriting Limited, concerned a disputed repair valuation and storage charge reimbursement following a non-fault accident; the Ombudsman found Tesco's assessment and settlement reasonable given the evidence and timing of notification. A third, again against AXA, concerned a liability dispute over a car park collision where CCTV evidence was inconclusive; the Ombudsman found AXA's investigation and £350 compensation offer for communication shortcomings to be fair.
The fourth example, against Tradex Insurance Company PLC, was upheld. It concerned the valuation of a stolen campervan, where the Ombudsman found that supporting adverts indicated comparable vehicles were available at higher prices than the trade guide average Tradex had used, and ordered a settlement based on the highest of the three guide valuations plus interest.
These four decisions cannot be extrapolated into a market-wide conclusion. They are presented as illustration of the types of dispute currently reaching the Ombudsman in motor insurance, not as proof that a shift in decision-making standards is under way.
Where motor insurance sits against related categories
Veste's related-category data gives some further context. Motor insurance, claim handling, a closely related but separately tracked category, shows an uphold rate of 26.6% across 6,755 decisions, close to the current 90-day motor insurance figure. Motor insurance, total loss valuation, shows a higher rate of 37.0% across 2,814 decisions. By comparison, home insurance claim disputes run at 40.4% across 3,430 decisions and service failures generally run at 42.3% across 4,433 decisions, both above the current motor insurance rate. This suggests that whatever is driving the recent fall in motor insurance uphold rates is not obviously mirrored across every related product and claim category in Veste's dataset, though a full cross-category comparison over the same 90-day window is beyond what the supplied data allows.
What the data does and does not show
The data shows a clear and sustained multi-year decline in the published motor insurance uphold rate, from 46.3% in 2024 to 29.9% so far in 2026, alongside a fall in decision volume in the most recent 90-day window compared with the one before it. It shows that the latest available monthly figures, for April, May and June 2026, are consistently lower than any point in the preceding 25 months, though the June 2026 figure rests on only 102 decisions and may be revised as further decisions are published.
What the data does not show is why. Veste's dataset records published Ombudsman decisions, not the full population of complaints made to firms, and changes in which cases get referred, escalated or published can shift the uphold rate without any change in underlying claims handling. Nor does the data support attributing the fall to any single firm: several of the largest firms in the motor insurance dataset, including Admiral Insurance Company Limited, Admiral Insurance (Gibraltar) Limited, esure Insurance Limited and Advantage Insurance Company Limited, all have lifetime uphold rates above the current market-wide 34.6% figure, so a shift in firm mix alone would not obviously explain a fall of this scale.
The practical implication
For firms and claims teams watching this category, the useful takeaway is not that any individual insurer's practices have deteriorated or improved. It is that the published uphold rate for motor insurance as a whole has been on a downward path for roughly two years, and the most recent quarter continued that path at a faster pace than the year-on-year figures alone would suggest. Whether that continues, stabilises or reverses will only become clear as further decisions are published in the coming months, and Veste will continue to track the monthly series for signs of either.
For consumers and advisers, the range of uphold rates across firms, from roughly one-fifth to close to one-half among those with sufficient published decisions, is a reminder that a market-wide average obscures meaningful firm-level differences, even before subsidiary naming conventions are taken into account.