The Building Societies Association (BSA) has welcomed the news that complaints about mutuals remains low.

Consumer complaints to the Financial Ombudsman Service (FOS) about building societies represented only 2% of all new complaints in 2009/10, the same as the previous year.

61% of complaints were about banks, up slightly from 59% last year, 11% about general insurers, 8% life insurance and investment product-providers, 4% mortgage intermediaries, 2% IFAs and 2% building societies.

The FOS had a higher than expected number of complaints in 2009/10. 163,012 new cases – 9% more than forecast and 28% higher than the previous year’s record number. The figure is the highest number of new cases the FOS has received during any year in their ten-year history. Complaints about PPI and current accounts drove this increase.

Chris Lawrenson, the BSA’s head of legal policy, said: “In a year where the FOS experienced their highest number of new cases ever