An article in Money Marketing was published in March 2021 with the headline "CMCs fail on 73% of FOS complaints". It said statistics from the Financial Ombudsman (FOS) covering the period April 2018 to February 2021 showed: Only 27 per cent of claims brought by ‘ambulance chasers’ went the way of the claimant... those seeking compensation for misselling would have a better chance if they … [Read more...]
Articles about the Financial Ombudsman Service (FOS)
Chief Ombudsman Caroline Wayman resigns
Caroline Wayman, the Chief Ombudsman and CEO at the Financial Ombudsman Service (FOS) has resigned, announcing on 10 March 2021 on LinkedIn that: After 22 years at the service and nearly 7 years as chief executive and chief ombudsman I am stepping down from the role. Her resignation comes the day after a highly critical article in the Daily Mail which pointed out: Fraud victims and cheated … [Read more...]
Amigo & Provident complaints soar – new Ombudsman data
On 3 March 2021, the Financial Ombudsman Service (FOS) published two sets of statistics. quarterly data for October-December 2020 summarises the types of complaints FOS has received. half-year data shows which firms had the most complaints in July-December 2020 and how often FOS upheld the customers' cases. Caroline Wayman, the FOS CEO says: "Excluding PPI, new complaints are up by … [Read more...]
Lessons from Amigo & Provident – FOS needs to be faster
In administration, customers with complaints at the Financial Ombudsman (FOS) have them returned to the administrators to resolve. The same happens in a Scheme of Arrangement which has been proposed by Amigo in December 2020 and by Provident in March - there FOS complaints are returned to the Scheme to be determined. FOS said in January 2021 it had about 13,000 open Amigo cases and about 500 … [Read more...]
Kerrigan v Elevate Credit – an “unfair relationship”
The judgment in the Kerrigan & others v Elevate Credit International Ltd was published on 5 August 2020. Elevate Credit International was a large UK payday lender, trading as Sunny. Kerrigan and the other eleven claimants were Sunny customers who had made affordability complaints to Sunny through a claims company. The claims company brought the case and selected six claimants; Sunny … [Read more...]
90% of guarantor loan cases won at Financial Ombusdman
The Financial Ombudsman (FOS) complaint statistics for Oct-Dec 2019 have just been published, see Product Complaints Data. For guarantor loans, FOS decided in favour of the consumer in 90% of cases: this is even higher than the 83% that were won in April-Jun 2019. these figures are a dramatic increase from the uphold rate of only 32% for the 2018 financial year. This … [Read more...]
2018 FOS statistics – most complaints about QuickQuid
New statistics for July-December 2018 from the Financial Ombudsman (FOS) show how payday loan complaints have jumped in the second half of 2018 and give details for how many complaints the larger lenders had. Almost all these cases are affordability complaints where a customer was given payday loans without proper affordability checks and is asking for a refund of interest paid. The … [Read more...]
Caroline Wayman, Chief Ombudsman, on payday loan complaints numbers
Caroline Wayman, the Chief Ombudsman at the Financial Ombudsman Service (FOS) gave evidence to the House of Commons Treasury Select Committee on 22 January 2019. Here I am just picking out some of her remarks which are relevant to payday loan affordability complaints. Complaint numbers Wayman talked about "the unprecedented growth" in FOS complaints about payday lenders this year. This was … [Read more...]
Complaining to the Financial Ombudsman – what happens
When you have a complaint about a loan, credit card, mortgage, pension or insurance and you can't get it settled with the company, send the complaint to the Financial Ombudsman Service (FOS). FOS describes what happens: Your complaint will be investigated by one of our case handlers, who will try to understand what happened and if the business did anything wrong. Your case handler will let you … [Read more...]
Why affordability refunds are easier WITHOUT a claims company
Does using a claims company make it easier to get a payday loan refund? Is this worth paying their expensive fees for? The answer turns out to be using a claims company may be slower, give you poorer advice and may get a lower refund than making a complaint yourself. And they are certainly very expensive! "But I don't know if I have got a good complaint" Many of their websites … [Read more...]