Bupa has become the second insurer to give further clarity about its complaints levels, suggesting providers may want further details to be published by the Ombudsman to put figures into a wider context.
Just 2% of all complaints received by Bupa were referred to the Financial Ombudsman Service (FOS) during the second half of last year, it revealed.
The provider released the figure in response to FOS data that showed 87 complaints from its customers reached the regulator between July and December, up from 64 in the previous six months.
Yesterday Aviva noted that just 0.01% of its more than 14 million UK customers referred matters to the Ombudsman.
Although many providers operating in the protection and health insurance sectors saw a rise in the number of grievances addressed by FOS, overall the markets continue to make up a very small proportion of the total.
Dr Natalie-Jane Macdonald, managing director of Bupa Health and Wellbeing, told COVER that it took its complaints handling very seriously.
"We have close to 3 million customers in the UK and we are committed to learning from each complaint to ensure that our customer service continually improves," she said.
"Between July and December 2011 we resolved almost all (98%) of the complaints that we received before they were escalated to the Financial Ombudsman.
"This means that of the 5,032 complaints closed by Bupa, only 87 went to the Financial Ombudsman during the second half of 2011.
"Providing good customer service is important to us and we take customer complaints very seriously.
"Of those complaints that were taken to the FOS in the second half of 2011, it upheld our original decision in over 50% of cases, this is compared to an industry average of 28%," she added.
