What the complaint record says about insurers
Every complaint taken to the National Financial Ombud is recorded and published. It is the only independent public measure of how an insurer behaves when a customer pushes back, and it is free to look at. Here it is, without a league table on top of it.
The insurers people complained about most
Listed alphabetically, not ranked. Bigger insurers appear more often because they have more customers, so the count on its own says little. Across all non-life insurers, 16.5 in 100 complaints ended in the customer’s favour.
Absa Insurance
- Complaints opened
- 767
- Customer got something back
- 13 in 100
Discovery Insure
- Complaints opened
- 481
- Customer got something back
- 10 in 100
Guardrisk
- Complaints opened
- 570
- Customer got something back
- 20 in 100
Hollard
- Complaints opened
- 419
- Customer got something back
- 12 in 100
Old Mutual Insure
- Complaints opened
- 634
- Customer got something back
- 10 in 100
Santam
- Complaints opened
- 647
- Customer got something back
- 7 in 100
Standard Insurance
- Complaints opened
- 779
- Customer got something back
- 7 in 100
National Financial Ombud Scheme, Annual Report 2025, 2025. Checked 26 September 2026.
Read this before you use it
These numbers are useful and they are not a score. Knowing what they cannot tell you is the difference between using them well and being misled by them.
A low figure is ambiguous
It can mean the insurer got things right first time, so complaints against it were not justified. It can equally mean it held its ground and people gave up. One number cannot separate those, which is why we do not rank on it.
Size distorts the count
An insurer with more customers will have more complaints. We tried correcting for market share and removed it, because complaints are mostly from households while market share includes commercial business, which made bank insurers look worse unfairly.
The full method, including what we tried and rejected, is on our data and methodology page.
Complaint records are one input, not the decision
Price, excess structure and what is actually covered matter too. Get quotes from the insurers you want to hear from, and nobody else gets your details.