Financial Fight Back Guide discussion

Saros2000

Just to say that, In response to a complaint originally submitted in February, I have recently heard back from the FOS that I can still expect to wait  another four months just for a case officer to be allocated. On past experience, it is then likely to take another three or four months to reach a decision.  It remains a very protracted process!

mo_rag

There's something I'm very unclear on with this. In a case involving life insurance or income protection insurance, it's very possible that over the period of the insurance the claimant's payout could easily exceed the current maximum award of £355,000. What happens in a situation, for example, where the Ombudsman rules that a claim was unfairly rejected and should be accepted by the Ombudsman? Does that mean that an insurer could just take the approach of rejecting high value claims, knowing the most the Ombudsman can do is tell them to pay the claim, up to a maximum of £355,000? Surely not! Surely "compensation" is for costs, distress & inconvenience, statutory interest, etc ... not for telling them to behave according to the terms of the policy. Anyone know?

dunstonh

What happens in a situation, for example, where the Ombudsman rules that a claim was unfairly rejected and should be accepted by the Ombudsman?

You would expect the limit not to apply as its not recovering a loss position. 

Does that mean that an insurer could just take the approach of rejecting high value claims, knowing the most the Ombudsman can do is tell them to pay the claim, up to a maximum of £355,000?

No.  

urely "compensation" is for costs, distress & inconvenience, statutory interest, etc ... not for telling them to behave according to the terms of the policy. Anyone know?

Compensation is for someone that is in a finanical loss due to wrongdoing.    A dispute on whether a policy has met the definition for a claim or not does not fall under this.

mo_rag

@dunstonh Thanks for that - as an IFA I guess you've had experience with this, and what you say does make sense to me -- but is there anywhere I can see this officially confirmed? 

dunstonh

I'm not sure it is formally documented anywhere.   I am also beginning to doubt my interpretation. I have read about cases that exceed the limit on claims and the insurers have paid out in full.   However, the fact I have read about them could be more to do with media coverage and the insurer voluntarily doing it rather than it being a requirement.  The regulatory position is stated that it is an award for omission.

The FCA documents issued at the time of increasing the limit spent the bulk of the period talking about PI insurance for advisers and didnt mention providers.

is this a real scenario or a hypothetical?   

If hypothetical, it is worth remembering that the FCA monitors complaint outcomes and trends.  if it saw an insurer rejecting claims only to pay out the FOS limit as it was lower then it would take action as it is a breach of a number of FCA principles.

The FOS also seeks legal advice on claims the exceed the limit.   So, the legal opinion would be known by both sides.   The courts do not have a limit and can award greater amounts.  

only around 125 complaints a year exceed the limit and most of those are DB transfers.   There is no evidence to suggest insurers are risking the size of the fines they would suffer if found to do it.

mo_rag

@dunstonh Thanks for your further thoughts ... not very clear then. It's hypothetical at the moment, but with the behaviour of this insurance company so far, there's nothing beneath them. I shall have to do some more research ...
Thanks again.

dr_bluestone

Having a long overdue case with the FOS, I checked my last e mail to see that they expect it to take four months to even get around to looking at my complaint. This seems awfully and ironically bad for an organisation that should be investigating and resolving complaints about poor service.
I looked at FOS reviews on Trustpilot to see that 90% of the 847 reviews were 1 star 'bads'. Whilst I can appreciate that these results are likely skewed by annoyed people being more likely to write a review, surely both these taken together show an organisation that is not fit for purpose.
Not sure what response I expect to this posting, but my expectations of a favourable outcome regarding my complaint are now very low!    

slopemaster

Hello, could anyone tell me please whether I can expect an acknowledgement from FOS?

I sent my complaint in a wek ago via Resolver but haven't had an acknowledgement so I don't know if it's been received....

These days i would expect most organisations to send either an instant autoreply, or an acknowledgement within 24 hours

I'm wondering whether I should resubmit it direct to FOS

mo_rag

slopemaster said:

Hello, could anyone tell me please whether I can expect an acknowledgement from FOS?

I sent my complaint in a wek ago via Resolver but haven't had an acknowledgement so I don't know if it's been received....

These days i would expect most organisations to send either an instant autoreply, or an acknowledgement within 24 hours

I'm wondering whether I should resubmit it direct to FOS

The FOS is extremely slow (even slower than that) about everything. It won't be Resolver causing the problem! You could try ringing the FOS to chase, but unless they've had it a good month you should expect to wait on hold for at least a half hour - and probably longer - just for them to tell you it's probably waiting to be put on the system. My complaint went in back in June 2019, and it's still not resolved. However, of course, you might at least get them to blame it on Resolver and advise you to resubmit it straight to the FOS (they never admit anything is their fault), but you can also expect that when eventually you get someone to actually look at your complaint and they discover you've submitted it twice they'll get snarky and then take it out on you.

You can of course (and should) record any phone call you make to the FOS so you can prove what they've said, but don't expect anyone there to care at the end of the day  it'll still be your fault, and if you say anything they can interpret as even mildly accusative they'll usually say you're abusive and threaten to stop dealing with you. Don't expect the Independent Assessor to take your side either - they have no real power and are extremely limited by their terms of reference as to what they can look at. Even if they do look at anything, they are only able to make a recommendation to the FOS - the FOS doesn't have to do anything they say. Don't expect any help from your MP either - there is no effective oversight of the FOS at all - it's all a roll of the dice as to which investigator or ombudsman you get - many (most?) have no formal qualifications or experience, no legal training, no financial training, and all they're required to do under the law is what they think is "fair and reasonable" - and they are not bound by any law or precedent. The FOS only "upholds" around 30% of consumer complaints (ref: financial-ombudsman.org.uk/data-insight/annual-complaints-data) , and "uphold" is an extremely questionable description. They even count cases as upholds where they say "yes the company did wrong, but they gave you £50 compensation, and we think that's enough" or "The company did lie to you and it's definitely misselling, but I think you'd have bought that policy or a similar one anyway even they'd been truthful, but we'll award you £200 for your distress and inconvenience". No-one with any sense would call those upheld complaints, but the FOS seems quite happy to re-define terms to suit themselves. 

Have a look at Trustpilot for more stories of misery caused by the FOS: [trustpilot website] review/www.financial-ombudsman.org.uk. A rating of 90% bad is hardly to be proud of - especially when you understand that a number of the most negative complaints are given 5 stars in the hope of being read, and one can't give less than 1 star!

And, here are the FOS own published stats: ([FOS website] data-insight/annual-complaints-data). They used to have a PowerBI interactive facility on that page which let you drill down and get more detailed stats, for instance to find out that they only publish around 10% of their decisions - thereby hiding ca 90% of their decisions (Does that really support their initiative towards transparency?)

But of course, anyone who has had a good experience of the FOS will immediately assume that I must just be a dissatisfied consumer. The real truth is that you lucked out and are one of the less than 10% who actually caught one of the few decent ombudsmen, or one who decided they should uphold yours just so the FOS has some positive stats.

For the majority, prepare yourself for an experience even worse than dealing with the financial company in the first place, and bear in mind the FOS will seriously erode the time limits you are under to ultimately go to court. All you can expect from the FOS is that they will usually be polite - because failing to be polite is pretty much the only thing the Independent Assessor can criticize them for.

You have been warned!

[Deleted User]

mo_rag said:

slopemaster said:

Hello, could anyone tell me please whether I can expect an acknowledgement from FOS?

I sent my complaint in a wek ago via Resolver but haven't had an acknowledgement so I don't know if it's been received....

These days i would expect most organisations to send either an instant autoreply, or an acknowledgement within 24 hours

I'm wondering whether I should resubmit it direct to FOS

The FOS is extremely slow (even slower than that) about everything. It won't be Resolver causing the problem! You could try ringing the FOS to chase, but unless they've had it a good month you should expect to wait on hold for at least a half hour - and probably longer - just for them to tell you it's probably waiting to be put on the system. My complaint went in back in June 2019, and it's still not resolved. However, of course, you might at least get them to blame it on Resolver and advise you to resubmit it straight to the FOS (they never admit anything is their fault), but you can also expect that when eventually you get someone to actually look at your complaint and they discover you've submitted it twice they'll get snarky and then take it out on you.

You can of course (and should) record any phone call you make to the FOS so you can prove what they've said, but don't expect anyone there to care at the end of the day  it'll still be your fault, and if you say anything they can interpret as even mildly accusative they'll usually say you're abusive and threaten to stop dealing with you. Don't expect the Independent Assessor to take your side either - they have no real power and are extremely limited by their terms of reference as to what they can look at. Even if they do look at anything, they are only able to make a recommendation to the FOS - the FOS doesn't have to do anything they say. Don't expect any help from your MP either - there is no effective oversight of the FOS at all - it's all a roll of the dice as to which investigator or ombudsman you get - many (most?) have no formal qualifications or experience, no legal training, no financial training, and all they're required to do under the law is what they think is "fair and reasonable" - and they are not bound by any law or precedent. The FOS only "upholds" around 30% of consumer complaints (ref: financial-ombudsman.org.uk/data-insight/annual-complaints-data) , and "uphold" is an extremely questionable description. They even count cases as upholds where they say "yes the company did wrong, but they gave you £50 compensation, and we think that's enough" or "The company did lie to you and it's definitely misselling, but I think you'd have bought that policy or a similar one anyway even they'd been truthful, but we'll award you £200 for your distress and inconvenience". No-one with any sense would call those upheld complaints, but the FOS seems quite happy to re-define terms to suit themselves. 

Have a look at Trustpilot for more stories of misery caused by the FOS: [trustpilot website] review/www.financial-ombudsman.org.uk. A rating of 90% bad is hardly to be proud of - especially when you understand that a number of the most negative complaints are given 5 stars in the hope of being read, and one can't give less than 1 star!

And, here are the FOS own published stats: ([FOS website] data-insight/annual-complaints-data). They used to have a PowerBI interactive facility on that page which let you drill down and get more detailed stats, for instance to find out that they only publish around 10% of their decisions - thereby hiding ca 90% of their decisions (Does that really support their initiative towards transparency?)

But of course, anyone who has had a good experience of the FOS will immediately assume that I must just be a dissatisfied consumer. The real truth is that you lucked out and are one of the less than 10% who actually caught one of the few decent ombudsmen, or one who decided they should uphold yours just so the FOS has some positive stats.

For the majority, prepare yourself for an experience even worse than dealing with the financial company in the first place, and bear in mind the FOS will seriously erode the time limits you are under to ultimately go to court. All you can expect from the FOS is that they will usually be polite - because failing to be polite is pretty much the only thing the Independent Assessor can criticize them for.

You have been warned!

oh dear

Resolver is a third party that mines your data to sell onto third parties after anonymising it, it absolutely could be the cause, always complain directly, never use third parties

FOS decisions are based on case precedents and their staff judge cases based on merits. Of course people who complained about PPI they never had because they thought they would get loads of free money will bad mouth the FOS, that is the nature of a review system. If you were not miss-sold or your complaint was time barred and you thought you were getting a free beach holiday, giving a bad review is boringly predictable

They don't need to publish every decision, it would take forever and loads of them are the same

FOS don't erode anything, once your complaint is made that stops the clock ticking on any time bar laws