FOS In Deluge Of Complaints

24/05/2010 by Bradders.

The Financial Ombudsman Service is receiving more complaints than ever and it received nearly a million complaints in the year to March.

The Ombudsman is bracing itself for over a million complaints this coming year.In order to deal with the surge in work, the Ombudsman has increased its staff numbers by about a third over the last few months. Industry sources still believe that although there is no alternative to the Ombudsman scheme, there is still a need for change. They believe that staff are not properly trained, and the scheme is slow, erratic and inconsistent.Over the coming months the service will be severely tested as they are currently getting more than 3,500 complaints each working day. The increasing number of ppi complaints is only adding to this burden.That said the Ombudsman managed to resolve over a 166,000 disputes between consumers and financial institutions and compensation was awarded to more than 50% of complainants.PPI is still the most common reason for a complaint and basically 3 out of every 10 new cases is a ppi complaint which is a 58% rise on the year before.

This has also meant that insurance disputes are on the increase although PPI is the main contributor to this.. The Financial Services Ombudsman was set up in 2000 with the mission to settle 25,000 disputes a year. This year it says it’s expecting to resolve 200,000 disputes.

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