Making a complaint to Financial Ombudsman

Molehusband

I read recently on one of these forums (I can't remember where) that when a consumer escalates a complaint to Financial Ombudsman, while this is a free service to consumers, apparently the financial institution has to pay them a fee for the Ombudsman investigation. Did I read that right and, if so,  is there any documentation publicly available about this fee?

molerat

Ain't Google a wonderful thing

https://www.financial-ombudsman.org.uk/businesses/resolving-complaint/case-fees

funding and case fees

Undervalued

Molehusband said:

I read recently on one of these forums (I can't remember where) that when a consumer escalates a complaint to Financial Ombudsman, while this is a free service to consumers, apparently the financial institution has to pay them a fee for the Ombudsman investigation. Did I read that right and, if so,  is there any documentation publicly available about this fee?

Basically yes as explained in the link that has been posted above. All the bigger institutions will have more than 25 complaints a year so they are paying a fee.

However, if the unwritten question is will they therefore settle with any complainant who will accept less than the fee? Then the answer is it is not as simple as that. Obviously if it became known that they did, all kinds of flimsy complaints would be made just to collect c. 500 quid. So the big boys look at the bigger picture and average out all kinds of factors. Sadly the rights and wrongs of the matter at not at the top of the list, nor is generally a cheap short term fix.

Thrugelmir

The act of complaining in itself doesn't result in a fee being charged. 

The Financial Ombudsman is funded by a levy on all financial institutions. The higher the cost of running the Financial Ombudsman the higher the levies that are imposed. Levies ultimately are recovered by recouping the cost from consumers within the products they purchase. 

Magic money trees are a scarce resource , in this world there's no free lunches.