FSA calls for firms to appoint complaints manager
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The FSA wants firms to identify a senior individual responsible for complaints handling as it looks to drive up industry standards of dealing with complaints.
The regulator is to publish a consultation paper today which looks at ways of ensuring that more firms resolve complaints promptly and fairly.
Its proposals also look to encourage firms to resolve complaints fairly when a complaint is first received, and require firms to carry out a root cause analysis of complaint triggers and then remedy any systemic problems.
The paper will also include additional guidance on taking account of ombudsman decisions and previous customer complaints.
Director of conduct policy Sheila Nicoll says: “Good complaints handling standards should be the rule not the exception and complaints handling forms a key part of our intensive and intrusive approach to supervise how firms deal with their customers.
“We will continue to work closely with firms to help push up standards in this area and to deliver improvements in the way firms treat their customers.”
Nicoll adds that two firms have been referred to enforcement as a result of poor complaints practices.
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Readers' comments (3)
David Jackson | 30 Sep 2010 11:17 am
It is astonishing that organisations that received hundreds of thousands of complaints a year (in the case of Lloyds that 800 per day) have to be told to appoint a senior manager to oversee complaint handling.
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Evan Owen | 30 Sep 2010 12:10 pm
This is something which is lacking, particularly at the banks and direct sales outfits, but compliance, complaints - how many hats can a sole trader wear? I know, the Guinness records people count the number of underpants an individual can slip on in a certain time frame so why not have a record for the number of hats an IFA can wear in his working like while standing on one leg, with a brush you know where?
No, seriously folks, there is an imbalance in the claims industry where the FOS and other opponents can run rings round some IFAs, particularly the retired one who have no idea what this is all about. How about an independent arbitration scheme which is not binding and compulsory (which would make it compliant with Article 6) yet does carry some weight because it would be run in accordance with the law of the land.
Dream on.
Society is in dire need of regulatory balance, I see less each day.
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Julian Stevens | 1 Oct 2010 12:05 pm
Is there really any need for the FSA to allocate yet more time and money to produce "a consultation paper which looks at ways of ensuring that more firms resolve complaints promptly and fairly"? I thought the rules and procedures had been defined years ago and that they already leave little, if any, scope for uncertainty as to what the FSA expects.
It was reported this week on the BBC news that the biggest, most blatant and most persistent transgressors of these rules are the banks, as everybody knows. It was reported that the banks even fail to draw to the attention of complainants their right to refer their complaint to the FOS, which is about as fundamental a breach as it's possible to imagine. So why doesn't the FSA concentrate its regulatory firepower in their direction? Which two firms have been referred to enforcement as a result of poor complaints practices? To the best of my knowledge, they certainly aren't banks. How can this possibly be? It's just further evidence that when it comes to the banks, the FSA either looks the other way or administers a little slap on the wrist, and then the latter only because an organisation such as the BBC rightly asks what the FSA's doing about the issue. When just about anyone else asks, the FSA just declines to comment or, if it does offer comment, it's just some wishy-washy bit of guff about how seriously the FSA takes its responsibilities for consumer protection. Rubbish ~ it's one policy towards the IFA sector and another, entirely different, laissez faire policy when it comes to the banks. It's just incredible that the FSA continues to try to maintain any sort of pretence to the contrary.
If there was any sort of equal treatment across all sectors of the industry, several of Hector's hit squads would be in there without any qualms or hesitation, followed by a few of those now familiar press releases featuring a picture of Margaret Cole trumpeting another triumph for the FSA's new policy of intensive and intrusive regulation. Yet when did we ever see one of those with the name of any bank in the frame? Never.
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