The power to settle financial complaints.
The power to settle financial complaints.
4 April 2008
To mark the first anniversary of consumer-credit businesses coming under the Financial Ombudsman Service, the ombudsman is launching a tailored online resource for consumer credit businesses, providing useful information on the complaint-handling rules, time limits and the ombudsman process.
Over the last year the ombudsman service has received – in line with expectations – around 2,000 consumer-credit complaints about a wide range of credit issues from debt-collecting and hire-purchase to pawn broking. For the ombudsman to be able to help, complaints about consumer credit must relate to an event after 6 April 2007 – and consumers need to have raised the problem first with the business concerned.
Jane Hingston, lead ombudsman for banking and credit, said:
It has been encouraging to see how quickly many businesses with consumer-credit licenses have adapted to our role - and how willing they have been to participate in arriving at informal complaint settlements.
