Careers: Life at the Financial Ombudsman

Playing our part

Our values define our culture, influence our decisions, and underpin our vision and strategy. They set out how we play our PART through purpose, ambition, respect and trust.

Working for us means you’ll get the satisfaction of helping others, and helping to make the financial sector fairer. Our staff tell us that they’re proud of the work they do, helping to put things right. What we do here makes a positive difference every day.

Each year, we resolve hundreds of thousands of complaints. When we decide a financial business has behaved unfairly, we tell them what they should do to put things right. And when we don’t uphold a complaint, we help give people a better understanding of why a business has acted in the way they have. Our work is often challenging, but it makes a real difference to people’s lives.

What we see, what we do

We resolve complaints, and share our insight to make things fairer

Because we deal with complaints from across the country, and involving all different kinds of financial businesses, we’re in a unique position to be able to see things that are happening to people when they deal with banks, insurers, and other businesses. We work closely with consumer groups, businesses and other organisations, including the Financial Conduct Authority and HM Treasury, to share our unique insight, help inform policy, and prevent complaints. So we’re not only resolving complaints, but playing a really crucial role in making the whole financial sector fairer.

Find out more about our work with other organisations.

In 2022/23 we received

new complaints

91% of people in the UK know who we are

We have over 2,400 staff based in London and Coventry

Where we’re based

Our offices

We have modern, open-plan offices in London and Coventry.

Our main London office is close to Canary Wharf, with plenty of direct public transport links. On site we have a gym, fitness classes, showers and changing rooms, a restaurant and café.
Our Coventry office, located in the Friargate development, is next to the train station with direct links to Birmingham and London, and only a five minute walk from the city centre.

We’ve moved to our new hybrid way of working, with us all working at least four days in the office across the fortnight.

See our location

Being diverse and inclusive helps us reflect the communities we serve and provide the best service to our customers.

It also helps us to provide the right support to our people and to make the Financial Ombudsman Service a great place to work. See our diversity and inclusion page to find out about:

awards we’ve received
employee schemes we’re part of
how our employee networks have helped to embed diversity, inclusion and wellbeing through events and activities, and
our inclusion strategy

Every year we publish a report that highlights our diversity and inclusion work, and shares information about pay and representation.

Our latest report highlights what we’ve achieved, where we still have more to do, and outlines areas we will focus on as we plan our diversity, inclusion and wellbeing strategy through to 2026.

We recognise that we have an impact on the world, from our procurement practices and how we recycle, through to how we develop our people and engage with the community. It’s important to us that we do the right thing by acting in a sustainable way, that allows us to meet our current and future commitments, and positively contributes to improving our social impact.

Our social responsibility and sustainability policy is guided by four key principles: our people, our environment, our community and our organisation.

We launched our new strategy in 2020, looking ahead on how we plan to develop and evolve our service, and what success looks like.

We set ourselves stretching and ambitious targets for the areas that comprise the three pillars of our strategy:

Enhancing our service
Preventing complaints and unfairness arising
Building an organisation with the capabilities it needs for the future

Find out how we performed in the last financial year, against the targets we set and challenges we faced.

Choosing a career with us

Join us as an Investigator

Join us as an Ombudsman

More about us

Who we've helped

We've helped thousands of people resolve their financial disputes. Hear from our customers, about their stories and how we helped.

Hear from our customers
Join as an Apprentice

Our apprenticeship programme gives you the experience of working in your chosen career field and the time to learn and achieve an industry recognised qualification.

Find out more about our apprenticeships
Hear more about our work

To get regular updates about our work and our insight, sign up to receive our email newsletter, Ombudsman News.

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Life at the Financial Ombudsman