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Topics: FOS
The Financial Ombudsman Service (FOS) will not seek to redact the names of businesses when it makes public its final decisions following a client complaint.
Stakeholders, including some trade associations, said publication might cause individual businesses reputational damage and lead to them being targeted by claims management companies.
But the FOS said hiding the identity of specific businesses "may serve the interests of the business concerned, but may harm the interests of other similar businesses who have not acted in the same way".
It said the fact that a decision may disclose embarrassing or inconvenient information about a financial business "is not, of itself, a reason to keep the issue confidential".
The government, via the Financial Services Bill, has indicated it wants the FOS to publish the decisions of its ombudsmen.
Currently, it does not make any of its decisions public, although it does publish anonymous case reviews to illustrate how it reaches decisions.
The FOS operates a three-stage complaints procedure. Only the final stage - a decision by an ombudsman, which is legally binding on a business if accepted by the complainant - will be published.
It is a three month consultation. Read more here.
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What about....???
Question:- This makes sense.. equally what about complainants who do not have their compliant upheld - will they be named and shamed to serve as a warning to others and allow firms to see "habitual complainants" and so avoid them as clients..or is this just a one way street ? ........... Background:- To be very clear, whilst some client's complaints are made from a genuine fear of having been ripped off/mislead and who may also disbelieve the evidence a good advisory firm should be able to produce - later to have their complaint also rejected by FOS there are those who see no harm in "trying it on" as they have nothing to lose.... given the Tory prospect of charging the complainant (plaintiff in a court of law where there are no FREE passes automatically) has not come to pass (yet ?)..with the continuing financial burden of win or lose unfairly falling as a case fee only on the "Defendant".
Posted by: Brian
Mmmm...
@Brian Interesting point, but complainants' identitied are protected regardless.
Posted by: SJS
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reputation damage.
I assume that when the person in the FOS makes an error in hindsight, I assume his name will be bandied about so that it affects their reputation. a) I doubt it b) It does not matter anyway they will carry on because any of their errors will not affect their ability to earn a living. This is especially over a recent case of a Broker who put business with Key Data and was cleared by the FSA, but then the FOS decided otherwise. I doubt whether both of those organisations will ever sing of the same hym sheets as it would mean cutting back on the number of people on high salaries in each organisation and possibly reducing our fees.
Posted by: terry