This page sets out what to do if you have a complaint about our service.
A customer service complaint is an expression of dissatisfaction about the service we’ve given you, for example, how we communicated or managed your case.
It is not suitable for complaining about the outcome of a case under the statutory scheme, or its merits or our legal and commercial obligations.
For information on what to do if you’re unhappy with:
- the outcome of your case, see how we make decisions.
- how we’ve handled your personal information, see our privacy policy.
To complain about our customer service, please talk to your case handler.
Talking to your case handler
Most of the time, your case handler will be able to sort things out for you straight away.
You can contact your case handler:
- at any point while we’re still dealing with your case, and
- within three months from the date when we tell you and the financial business the outcome of the complaint.
If you aren’t sure who to contact, call our consumer helpline and we’ll connect you to someone who can help.
If your case handler can’t resolve the problem, you may ask for a manager to look at your complaint.
Asking a manager to look at the complaint
If you've asked for a manager to review your complaint, we will acknowledge your request within two working days. And we’ll send your complaint to the manager who is most suitable for dealing with the issue you’re unhappy about.
The manager will review your concerns and share their findings with you within 15 working days. They’ll also guide you through next steps if you want to take your complaint about our service further.
If they need more time to look into things, they’ll contact you and explain why.
Sometimes, we might wait until a case is closed before looking at a customer's concerns, so that we can review everything at once – for example, if you’ve made more than one service complaint about the same case.
We will always let you know if we think that’s the best way to resolve things.
The Independent Assessor
If you're still unhappy, you can take your complaint to the Independent Assessor.
They cannot review the outcome of your case, but they will conduct an independent review of the service we gave you.
If they think our service was satisfactory, they’ll tell you why. If they think it wasn’t, they’ll explain why and recommend what we should do to put things right.
The Independent Assessor is appointed by our Board and has official terms of reference that set out how and when they will consider a complaint.
They also produce an annual report for the Board, setting out the findings and recommendations they have made over the year.