Context
On 1st December 2021 the Financial Ombudsman Service (FOS) reached its 20-year anniversary, so 20 years since it officially became the single ombudsman service for consumer complaints about financial products and services. FOS’ role and experience gives it a unique perspective on the causes of complaints, how they arise, and their impact on lives and livelihoods.
Key points to note
- Since it was established in 2001, FOS has helped individual consumers and smaller businesses to resolve over 4 million complaints about financial businesses.
- Brought together by the merger of eight separate schemes, the single Financial Ombudsman Service was to be a one-stop service for consumer complaints, providing a unified system of complaint-handling, to help reduce possible confusion or duplication and with the ability to view and respond to trends across the industry sectors.
- FOS has seen complaints about wide-ranging and topical issues, from complaints about fraud and scams, to payday lending and pensions.
- Most recently FOS has used its experience to help with a range of pandemic‑related issues, from business interruption insurance claims, cancelled weddings and holidays, emergency business loans, through to financial hardship and affordability issues arising from the wider economic repercussions.
- FOS’ work has included issues where mass complaints have been made about single issues – mortgage endowments, current account charges, high-cost and short-term lending – and although its work on payment protection insurance (PPI) is now starting to conclude, it helped to shape FOS for more than a decade.
- One of the regular – and enduring – ways FOS shares its unique perspective is through its newsletter, Ombudsman News, which also turned 20 this year, with its first edition published in 2001. Although the format has changed over time, FOS continues to use it to share the latest news and insight from the Financial Ombudsman.
- Looking ahead, FOS remains committed to sharing its insight and experience to prevent complaints and unfairness arising and, as it marks 20 years of helping financial businesses and their customers resolve complaints, its work will focus on creating a modern and agile service that is fit for the future – one that is able to adapt to changing demand and new and emerging issues.
Next actions
None – for information and awareness.