Context
The Financial Ombudsman Service (FOS) has released a consultation paper which includes a proposal to help the service move faster in reducing customer waiting times.
During the last financial year, FOS received 90,000 more cases than expected which businesses had been unable to resolve for their customers. Whilst they are on track to exceed the complaint resolution target set out in plans for this financial year this will still see them end 2021/22 with a significant queue.
Key points to note
Within the consultation the FOS are exploring a range of initiatives to help move faster and reduce customer waiting times. This includes:
- Engaging with businesses differently to move complaints along more quickly
- Initiatives to free up investigators’ time, such as routing calls through other teams
- Focused triage in some areas of casework, for example in fraud and scam
- A temporary proposed change to how firm-specific complaints data is published. It is proposed that – for a limited period – complaints with the service that are proactively settled by businesses before the FOS has issued its opinion will not count towards the business’s uphold rate.
Next actions
The consultation closes at 5.00pm on Monday 18 October 2021. Any responses should be emailed to: consultations@financial-ombudsman.org.uk Next steps and implementation will be published by 1st November 2021.