The Financial Ombudsman Service (FOS) says it has significantly reduced its backlog of consumer complaints against financial firms and is not suffering from a cost-of-living crisis.
Abby Thomas, chief ombudsman, said the FOS has reduced its backlog of complaints from 90,000 cases in May 2021 to around 37,000 in March 2022. One in five cases were resolved within three months, and she said the agency is currently processing 55 percent of cases resolved quickly.
The goal for next year is to bring that number to nine out of 10 cases, she told lawmakers on a Treasury select committee.
She said the ombudsman’s office has yet to see a spike in complaints due to pressure on the cost of living. There have been many complaints about utility bills but not financial services, but “we’re keeping a close eye on this as it could be an important trend for us.”
She added that the turnaround time for an average case was 6.4 months, compared to the target of 4.2 months.
Ms Thomas took over the FOS post after Caroline Wayman stepped down in March 2021 amid growing pressure to address backlogs of unresolved complaints.
Despite the stronger performance, Ms Thomas acknowledged that FOS “needs to increase speed” to benefit both consumers and financial firms. She said that creating more specialized teams of researchers has improved productivity.
Baroness Manzour, Chairperson of the FOS, told MEPs that the service expects much higher performance as well as quality assurance to ensure high service standards for both consumers and businesses.
FOS detectives have taken on 60 cases involving funeral plans as part of their new responsibilities and have already been in talks with the Financial Conduct Authority about the possibility of handling complaints related to ‘buy now’ payment services if and when they become regulated in the UK. .
Plans to introduce mandatory compensation for bank-sanctioned forced payment fraud should result in fewer complaints of this type. said Mrs Thomas. FOS has received more than 10,000 complaints of cases where customers or businesses were tricked into transferring money from their account to a scammer posing as the real beneficiary.
She dismissed Labor MP Shivain McDonagh’s suggestion that the ombudsman’s office was “thrown at risk” because the Payments System Regulator (PSR), which developed the mandatory plan, did not show “gross negligence” in determining the victim’s death. own contribution to fraud, which may result in banks not having to pay compensation.
A Treasury Special Committee recently warned that plans to redress fraud victims would be “immature” unless regulators step in to protect consumers.
The rules being considered by the PSR would require banks and building societies to fully refund victims of authorized forced payments (APPs) if the loss exceeds £100.
Baroness Manzour defended the Ombudsman’s Office against growing complaints about the adequacy of its investigations. Complaints to an independent expert that FOS investigators do not properly address complaints have risen from 13 percent in 2020-2021 to 31 percent in 2021-2022.
The Baroness said that only a very small number of the tens of thousands of complaints reviewed by the FOS have been referred to an independent assessor. She said each case is unfortunate, but the agency stepped up its response.
Source: I News
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