DON’T take financial advice from banks. That is the controversial warning from a top independent financial adviser in York.

Stuart Matheson, of Grosvenor Financial Consultants, in Swinegate launched his stinging attack on bank advisers following the latest report in the Financial Ombudsman Service’s annual review that 61 per cent of the complaints it received were about banks – and complaints about banking and credit rose by 30 per cent.

Mr Matheson said: “Following on from the banking bailouts it is clear that the banks are not capable of looking after their own financial affairs let alone other people’s.”

He argued that the reintroduction of massive banker bonuses funded by the general public, endorsed his fears.

He said: “There is no doubt that this is driven by the target and bonus culture that exists where staff from the counter up are often tasked with getting a targeted number of leads for advisers who in turn are targeted to make sales rather than having the care of their clients as the number one priority.

“Of course, the banks will respond with the same old ‘the client must have an interview with a professionally trained adviser before we make a recommendation’ but that is very often simply providing the paperwork to back up the sale.”

Mr Matheson stressed that there were some good advisers working for the banks and he sympathises with them given the pressure that they are put under. “Nevertheless the bottom line is that the client should be the number one priority – not the achieving of targets and bonuses. There are too many examples where the high fliers are held up as being the ones to emulate even though many within the organisations know that this is achieved with the sales targets being the focus rather than clients best interests”. Moreover, he said, banks were often tied to one company – that is they sold the product from the company to which they were tied whether or not it was the best one on the market for the customer’s particular needs. “While tied companies may have some products that are fine it is clear that they will not have the best products in every area and so it makes sense to shop around or get an Independent Financial Adviser (IFA) to shop around for you. “A key point is that tied advisers represent their company while Independent Financial Advisers represent the client.”

This was borne out by the Financial Ombudsman report’s startlingly contrasting figures for IFAs. Just two per cent of complaints received were about IFAs.

“While this clearly shows that Independent Financial Advisers are not perfect and we all need to strive to improve, I think it is crystal clear – based on the gulf in the complaints figures – where people should look to for advice”.

A spokesman for the British Bankers Association hit back at Mr Matheson, accusing him of “bank bashing” and selectively using the Ombudsman’s figures in a bid to get IFAs to win more customers.

He said: “That is not what the Ombudsman’s report was for. It should be noted that banks operate 150 million accounts in the UK. The Ombudsman’s report showed there were roughly 72,000 new cases investigated against banks by the Ombudsman last year and about half of these found in favour of the customer.

“Banks take their complaint handling very seriously and recognise that every complaint represents a break in communication somewhere along the line.

“So while we appreciate there is still a great deal of work to be done it is very wrong to allow a partial use of statistics to cloud the fact that banks conduct an enormous amount of business for satisfied customers.”