In the past five years, complaints about car and motorcycle insurance accounted for around a third of all general insurance complaints referred to the Financial Ombudsman Service. Market intelligence firm Insurance DataLab said this equated to more than 55,250 complaints from a total of almost 170,000 for the general insurance market as a whole.

The research found that the rate of complaints upheld for motor was 26.7% over the past five years. This was slightly lower than the average of 30% across all general insurance product lines. The research showed that special event insurance had the highest upheld rate of all general insurance products, with the FOS finding in favour of the customer in 53.3% of all cases.

Matt Scott, co-founder of Insurance DataLab, said: “These figures should be worrying news for the insurance industry, especially with the regulatory spotlight shining so brightly on insurers as they grapple with implementing Consumer Duty.”

He added: “The best performers in the market can have upheld rates as low as 10.5%. But at the other end of the market, we are seeing a number of insurers with more than 30% or even 40% of complaints being upheld in favour of the customer – this is clearly not good enough, and with Consumer Duty coming into force this July, insurers need to act fast to remedy this issue.”

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