A small rate rise, a much bigger volume fall
In the most recent 90-day window tracked by Veste, the uphold rate for published Financial Ombudsman decisions naming Shawbrook Bank Limited stood at 7.0%, up from 3.8% in the prior 90-day window. That is a rise of 3.2 percentage points. Over the same two windows, the number of published decisions fell from 569 to 299, a drop of 270 decisions, or 47.5%. Both windows meet Veste's minimum sample threshold of 30 decisions, so the comparison is not resting on a handful of cases. But the size of the volume fall is worth as much attention as the rate rise, because a smaller, differently composed batch of decisions can move an uphold rate without that shift reflecting any change in how complaints are being handled.
Across the full published history available to Veste, from first sight of a decision on 3 September 2013 to the most recent on 15 June 2026, Shawbrook Bank Limited has appeared in 2,486 published decisions. Of these, 396 were upheld, 74 were partially upheld and 2,016 were not upheld, giving an overall uphold rate of 17.4%. That compares with a corpus-wide baseline uphold rate of 28.8% across all 401,815 decisions Veste has analysed. On the all-time figures, Shawbrook's published decisions have been upheld less often than the average firm in Veste's dataset, though this baseline spans many firms, sectors and years and is not a direct like-for-like comparison.
What the year-on-year figures show
The annual totals reveal how much the volume of published decisions naming Shawbrook has varied. In 2022, Veste recorded 646 decisions with an uphold rate of 12.9%. That fell to 165 decisions in 2023, with the uphold rate rising to 26.4%. In 2024, the total dropped further to 140 decisions, with an uphold rate of 23.6%. Then 2025 saw the uphold rate climb again, to 28.6% across 339 decisions. In the opening months of 2026, the picture has changed markedly: 837 decisions have already been published for the year, with an uphold rate of just 4.8%. All five years meet the minimum sample threshold, so each figure can be reported and compared, but the pattern across them is not a smooth trend. It moves in both directions, and the swing in 2026 stands out as an inversion of the higher uphold rates seen in 2023 to 2025.
The monthly series and the December-to-March surge
Veste's monthly series covers 25 months, from June 2024 to June 2026. For most of that period, monthly decision volumes for Shawbrook were modest, ranging from single figures up to around 30. Between June 2024 and November 2025, uphold rates in individual months moved substantially, from 0% in June 2024 up to 72.2% in March 2025, then back down to 23.5% in August 2025 and 28.1% in November 2025. With totals often below 20 decisions a month, these swings are unsurprising: small monthly samples produce volatile percentages, and no single month's rate should be read as a durable shift in outcomes.
The picture changes from December 2025 onward. Monthly volumes jump sharply: 155 decisions in December 2025, 215 in January 2026, 224 in February 2026 and 224 again in March 2026, before falling back to 35 in April, 80 in May and 59 in June. Across these high-volume months, uphold rates are consistently low: 6.5% in December, 1.4% in January, 4.2% in February, 7.8% in March, 11.4% in April, 8.1% in May and 0% in June 2026, when none of the 59 decisions published were upheld. This run of months, with far higher volumes than anything seen earlier in the series, is what has pulled the annual 2026 uphold rate down to 4.8% and appears to be the dominant feature of the recent data, rather than the smaller uptick captured in the latest 90-day comparison.
Reading the 90-day comparison against that backdrop
The period comparison showing a rise from 3.8% to 7.0% needs to be read against this longer run of low-uphold, high-volume months. The current 90-day window (299 decisions) and the prior 90-day window (569 decisions) both sit within, or close to, the December 2025 to June 2026 stretch where monthly volumes were unusually high and uphold rates unusually low by the standards of the preceding 18 months. A 3.2 percentage point rise, from a low base, is consistent with normal month-to-month variation within that same low-uphold regime, rather than a reversal of it. The concurrent 47.5% drop in decision volume between the two windows is the larger and more unusual movement, and it is not explained by the supplied data. Veste's evidence does not indicate why volumes surged from December 2025 and have since fallen back, and no cause should be inferred from the figures alone.
Illustrative decisions from the most recent batch
Four decisions published on or around 12 and 15 June 2026, all involving Shawbrook Bank Limited, were not upheld. Each concerned credit agreements used to finance Fractional Club timeshare memberships, with complainants raising unfair credit relationship claims under Section 140A of the Consumer Credit Act 1974, misrepresentation claims under Section 75, and alleged breaches of Regulation 14(3) of the Timeshare Regulations concerning marketing timeshares as investments.
In one case (DRN-6429128), the Ombudsman found no actionable misrepresentation, concluding the complainants had been primarily motivated by holiday benefits rather than investment returns, and that commission of 10% and 9.91% of borrowing was low and did not render the credit relationship unfair. In another (DRN-6428935), involving a £8,520 purchase, the Ombudsman again found no actionable misrepresentation and noted a commission rate of 1%. A third (DRN-6429186), concerning a £15,600 purchase, cited a 5% commission and found the lending affordable with no evidence of undue pressure. A fourth (DRN-6389678), involving a £20,402 agreement, likewise found a 5% commission too low to create unfairness under the benchmark the Ombudsman applied, and concluded the complainant would have proceeded regardless.
These four decisions share a common pattern: Ombudsman findings that regulatory breaches by suppliers, where identified as possible, do not automatically render a credit relationship unfair, and that the low level of commission paid to suppliers was a recurring factor in not upholding the complaints. They illustrate the kind of case appearing in the recent high-volume, low-uphold months, but four decisions cannot establish what is driving hundreds of others in the same window, and Veste is not asserting that they do.
What the related complaint categories show
Across Veste's broader complaint categories, uphold rates vary by type. Complaints about goods and services under Section 75 show an uphold rate of 15.6% across 1,626 decisions. Investment mis-selling complaints show 17.0% across 261 decisions. Irresponsible lending complaints show a notably higher uphold rate of 34.1% across 145 decisions, while service failures generally show 32.9% across 41 decisions. Other regulated complaints, account administration errors, mortgage administration and arrears handling, and ISA and savings administration complaints show uphold rates of 11.7%, 17.4%, 25.0% and 21.0% respectively, across samples ranging from 31 to 196 decisions. These figures describe categories across Veste's wider dataset, not Shawbrook specifically, and are included here as context for the type of issue at stake in the timeshare finance decisions illustrated above, several of which fall under the Section 75 goods and services category.
What the data does and does not show
The supplied data shows that Shawbrook Bank Limited's uphold rate rose by 3.2 percentage points between two 90-day windows, both meeting the minimum sample size, while decision volume fell by 47.5%. It shows a much larger and more sustained shift in the monthly series: a jump in published decision volumes from December 2025 that coincided with uphold rates falling to some of the lowest levels in the 25-month series, including 0% in June 2026. It shows that the annual uphold rate for 2026 so far, 4.8%, is markedly lower than in 2023, 2024 and 2025.
What the data does not show is a cause. Veste's evidence does not indicate why decision volumes rose so sharply from December 2025, why they have since fallen, or what is driving the low uphold rates in that period beyond the illustrative decisions summarised above. It is also worth restating that Veste's firm-level figures are built from the business name recorded on each published decision. Where a banking group operates through more than one legal entity, those entities are counted separately and not combined, so these figures describe Shawbrook Bank Limited as named, not any wider corporate group.
The useful takeaway
For anyone tracking Shawbrook's published Ombudsman record, the more consequential figure in this data is not the 3.2 percentage point rise in the latest 90-day window, but the much larger and longer run of low uphold rates across the high-volume months from December 2025 to June 2026, against a backdrop of far smaller and more variable monthly totals in the preceding 18 months. A short-term uptick from a very low base, on a shrinking sample, is the kind of movement that warrants continued monitoring rather than firm conclusions.