FOS wants better communication with FCA 

Financial Ombudsman Service (FOS) Chief Executive Abby Thomas says the ombudsman would like to improve its communications with the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) to help the regulator respond quicker to emerging issues in the financial sector.

The Chief Ombudsman told the Treasury Select Committee that while she is satisfied with the level of powers the ombudsmen currently has, she would like to see better data sharing between the FOS and the FCA. Thomas said “I would like to look at opportunities to share our data in a more timely way,” calling for a “kind of early warning signal if a particular product type or a particular complaint type draws an elevated number of complaints.”

According to the FOS, it has reduced the backlog from 90,000 cases as at May 2021 to around 37,000 as at March 2022. Despite a better performance, Thomas did admit that the FOS “needs to improve our pace which would benefit both customers and businesses”.

As a way of dealing with the backlog, the FOS has moved staff members into more specialist teams and Thomas said she is pleased with the progress the service is making. Thomas also noted that in the past year, the service has seen an increase of 20% to 30% of its cases being resolved in three months. For next year, Thomas said it wants to target more ambitious numbers.

Thomas said productivity at the FOS has also increased from 2022 to 2023 and that the hybrid work model implemented after Covid “has not been detrimental.”

The recent independent assessor review of the FOS said:“The service has reduced its backlog but still has someway to go in some areas to ensure a fast and efficient service from the start.”

In response to this statement, Manzoor said that by the end of the year FOS would have resolved 205,000 complaints. Out of those 205,000 the FOS receives 4,000 complaints and then just 500 of those go to the independent assessor.

Manzoor said that the FOS “has set some targets for the executive board” that are 95% of enquiries will be signposted or covered within five days.