The Financial Ombudsman Service (FOS) threw out two-thirds of gripes against the most complained-about advisory groups in the first half of 2013, figures show.
On average, 33% of the 714 complaints against advisers handled by the FOS in the six months from 1 January were found in favour of the complainant, against an average of 64% across all businesses.
In total, six advisory groups made it onto the FOS's latest complaints leaderboard, which only lists those firms which had both received 30 complaints in the period and had at least a further 30 resolved by the Ombudsman.
The largest of these, Sesame, was predictably the most complained-about advice business, with 292 gripes in the period, marginally more than it faced in the previous six months. But four out of five complaints against it were rejected by the FOS, the same proportion as Personal Touch Financial Services.
Restricted group Openwork had 68% of 142 complaints against it rejected, while Intrinsic-bound Positive Solutions and wealth manager St James's Place had no case to answer in 61% and 73% of cases respectively.
The average figure for the advisory groups listed was skewed somewhat by the 65% of upheld complaints recorded against national IFA Chase de Vere.
The FOS today reported a record six months for complaints against financial businesses. Payment protection insurance was, once again, behind many of the more than 327,000 gripes handled by the Ombudsman in the first half of the year.
More than 95% of the cases came from 195 financial businesses - out of more than 100,000 businesses the Ombudsman covers.
The big insurers faced 6,709 complaints in total, with Aviva leading the way after it generated 2,133 complaints against it. In total, insurers made up for 3.3% of complaints.
