video-welcome
from Walter Merricks, chief ombudsman
Hello and welcome to the Financial Ombudsman Service. I’m Walter Merricks, the chief ombudsman. I’d like to tell you a little about what we do and how we can help you.
If you’ve fallen out with your bank, insurance company or financial firm – and you haven’t been able to solve the problem – then have a look at our website or give us a call. It’s our job to help resolve disputes between financial businesses and their customers. We were set up by parliament to do this, as independent experts. And our service to consumers is free.
Every year we help resolve tens of thousands of disputes, so we know a lot about what causes complaints and how best to resolve them. As with any kind of dispute, it’s always best to try and sort things out as early as possible. You should complain first to the business you think was responsible for the problem. Give them a chance to sort things out. By law, all the businesses we cover have to follow an official complaints procedure. That means they must take your complaint seriously.
If you’re having trouble getting in touch with the business you’re unhappy with, or you’re unsure about anything, then let us know. We’ll explain what you need to do next. And we can contact the business for you and ask them to look into your complaint.
If the business doesn’t sort things out, or you’re unhappy with what it’s done, that’s when we can get involved and look into things for you. If the business isn’t able to resolve the problem to your satisfaction, this is the leaflet they should give you. This tells you what happens next and how we do things. It explains that we’ll need some details from you at this stage to check that your problem is one we can look into. We’ll do this by asking you to fill in our complaint form. We can help you fill it in over the phone or you can download the form off our website.
There are always two sides to any dispute, so we give both sides a fair hearing. The ombudsman service isn’t as formal as a law court but we’re completely independent and impartial, just as a judge would be if you went to court.
When we look at a complaint, we don’t take sides. We’ll get the paperwork and look at the facts. We ask questions, listen carefully and weigh up all the arguments. Then we tell you what we think. We can’t please both sides every time, so we might not tell you what you want to hear. We might decide you are right, or we might decide that you haven’t been treated unfairly. Or we might suggest some kind of compromise to help you and the business sort things out. But if we decide that you’ve lost out, then we can ensure that things are put right for you.