The Financial Ombudsman Service (FOS) handled 1,012,371 initial enquiries and complaints from consumers during the 2010/2011 financial year. This equates to around 4,000 each working day.

51% of new cases were about the sale of payment protection insurance (PPI), with the number more than doubling to 104,597, the highest number ever received in a year about a single financial product.

Around one in five of the initial consumer enquiries the service received turned into a formal dispute requiring the involvement of FOS adjudicators and ombudsmen, a record 206,121 new cases, up 26% on the previous year.

FOS said it resolved almost half of all disputes (apart from PPI) within three months and three quarters within six months. It resolved 164,899 cases, fewer than it planned, because of the legal action taken against it on PPI complaints.

51% of the total number of cases we dealt with related to four financial services groups, while 3,592 businesses accounted for just 5% of its caseload.

The proportion of cases FOS dealt with in the financial year 2010/2011 that related to banks rose from 61% to 65.5%. It says this reflected the 113% increase in the volume of complaints about PPI during the year.

Which? executive director, Richard Lloyd, said: “There is clearly a serious problem with complaints-handling in the financial services industry. Never before has the Ombudsman’s role been so vital – the Government must resist any pressure from the industry to weaken it.