Financial Ombudsman

The financial ombudsman service was set up by parliament in order to help resolve desputes between indiviudals and financial service providers.

Its role is to resolve, quickly and with minimum formality, on the basis of what is fair and reasonable in the circumstances of each case, complaints by individuals or certain small entities about the provision of (or failure to provide) a financial service by financial businesses.

last year, more than two million people contacted them with problems about:

• bank accounts
• credit, debit and store cards
• payment protection insurance (PPI)
• other insurance, like motor, travel and household
• loans, including payday loans
• other credit, like car finance
• mortgages
• repayment problems and debt collection
• money transfers and online payments
• financial advice, savings and investments
• pensions

•Compulsory jurisdiction – This applies to financial services businesses authorised or registered by the Financial Services Authority (FSA) and covers complaints about FSA-regulated activities, consumer credit activities and certain other specified activities. •Consumer credit jurisdiction – the consumer credit act 2006 created the consumer credit jurisdiction. This covers consumer credit complaints against any businesses with standard licences from the Office of Fair trading not authorised or registered by the FSA. If the licensee is also authorised or registered by the FSA, its consumer credit complaints are covered by the compulsory jurisdiction. •Voluntary jurisdiction – This applies voluntarily to financial businesses and activities that are not covered by the compulsory jurisdiction or the consumer credit jurisdiction. This could include the consumer credit activities of EEA businesses carried on from an establishment outside the UK.

•One of the main aims of this service is to make sure that all complaints are taken seriously by the banks and investigated fully. It is also to make sure that banks become more transparent and can be regulated when it comes to how they deal with complaints particularly when how they deal with people with complain making sure they feel satisfied their complaint will be fully investigated. •Another main aim is making sure the banks are actively investigating complaints and are trying their best to rectify these misstate. Another important part is to make sure that misstates do not keep on happening and that banks are actively trying their best to resolve any complaints that keep coming up in large numbers.