Ombudsman News 179

 We are consulting on proposed temporary changes to the way we report business-specific complaints data. It follows on from a similar initiative in November 2021, which led to around 100 businesses making 7,000 offers to resolve complaints more quickly.

The consultation sets out proposals designed to incentivise financial businesses to settle complaints proactively where the Financial Ombudsman Service is yet to issue an opinion by making a longer-term change to how we publish business-specific complaints data. It’s one of the measures that the Financial Ombudsman is taking to get answers to customers faster. The full consultation, and how to respond, is available now on our website.

Our Technical desk has a new name. We’ve changed the name to better reflect what the team does – that is, supporting financial businesses and consumer representatives with guidance about resolving disputes before they escalate.

Our Chief Operating Officer, Karl Khan, explains the reasons behind the rebrand and how the hub can support your organisation.

Read the full blog Contact our Business Support Hub 

We were on  LBC’s ‘Ask’ programme  recently, to help answer questions about some of the problems people face with Section 75 claims, car insurance, mortgages and debt collecting. We  also spoke about how we can help and our approach to resolving the complaints we see.

Our latest complaints data on financial products and services is now available on our website. Between October and December 2022, we received 41,303 new complaints.

It includes the number of enquiries and new cases we received, and the proportion of complaints resolved in favour of customers. As well as information about the most complained-about products and trends for the quarter.

We’ve published a diversity, inclusion and wellbeing report for 2022. The report shares our gender and ethnicity pay gap data and outlines our achievements and where we still have work to do.