In a year that brought record FSA fines, a guide to making complaints was one of the most visited pages on the FSA website.

‘Three steps to making a complaint’ was the second most visited page during 2011.

The page linked to the Financial Ombudsman Service which received over one million complaints last year.

Half of these complaints related to four specific financial services groups including Barclays Bank and Lloyds Banking  Group.

Barclays was fined £7.7m at the start of 2011, one of the biggest ever FSA fines, for failures relating to the sale of two funds and was told to pay as much as £60m in redress for customers.

Complaints also surged after the British Bankers’ Association dropped its appeal against paying redress for customers mis-sold Payment Protection Insurance.

It was estimated over £9bn would have to be paid out by banks in redress, including Lloyds Banking Group which made up a third of the PPI market and set aside £3.2bn.

The most visited page on the site overall was a guide to UK banking and savings groups.

This page detailed the UK’s largest deposit takers and how they are authorised as well as the Financial Services Compensation Scheme (FSCS) limits for customers.

Third place was the compensation limits for FSCS, this would have affected customers of firms such as MF Global, Arch Cru and Norwich & Peterborough.