The Financial Ombudsman Service has launched a consultation on proposed amendments to how it reports business-specific complaints data, aimed at incentivising businesses to settle complaints proactively.
The proposal would create a separate category in the biannual business-specific complaints data to record any complaint that is resolved by a fair and reasonable offer from a business within 14 days of the Financial Ombudsman Service requesting the respondent business’s complaints file.
Complaints settled in this way would be reported as “proactively settled” and would not contribute to a business’s overall “uphold rate”.
The proposal follows a similar initiative launched in November 2021, which saw around 100 businesses making 7,000 offers to resolve complaints more quickly.
The consultation is open for two weeks and closes at 5 pm on 20th March 2023.
