Increased level of complaints upheld by FOS

The latest complaints statistics published by the Financial Ombudsman Scheme reveal an uptick in the percentage of disputes decided by the adjudicator in favour of the customer. Denis O’Connor analyses the data and ponders the implications for firms’ delivery of good customer outcomes.

Denis O’Connoris a fellow of both the Institute of Chartered Accountants in England & Wales and the Chartered Institute of Securities and Investment. He was a member of the British Bankers’ Association Money Laundering Committee from 2003-10 and a member of the Joint Money Laundering Steering Group’s board and editorial panel between 2010 and 2016. He has been a frequent speaker at industry conferences on financial crime issues, both in the United Kingdom and abroad.

The financial services industry received mixed news when the Financial Ombudsman Scheme recently published statistics about the complaints it has received during the year ended 31 March 2020 [1] about regulated firms. The good news was that the number of complaints fell by 30 per cent from 388,392 in 2018/19 to 271,468, largely driven by a 32 per cent drop in payment protection insurance (PPI) complaints to 122,153. Conversely, the bad news was that the percentage of customer complaints upheld, after being rejected by firms, rose from 28 to 32 per cent.