The Financial Ombudsman Service (FOS) has reassured firms that it will not apply the incoming Consumer Duty rules retrospectively.
This is according to Simon Rawle, ombudsman leader at the FOS who was addressing delegates at a webinar organised by the Association of British Insurers on achieving good outcomes under the new Consumer Duty.
Rawle (pictured) explained that the question of whether the duty will applied retrospectively is one that has come up a lot in discussions with financial services firms.
But Rawle added FOS was “very keen” to reassure delegates that it will not be doing this.
“We will be applying it at the end of the implementation period and we will make sure it’s not applied retrospectively,” Rawle said.
“Obviously, there are some products which continue, which the duty will apply to – but we won’t be expecting you to have applied the consumer duty prior to the date that it’s actually implemented.”
‘We don’t know what the FOS will say’
Despite this clarification, in a subsequent session Herbert Smith Freehills consultant Alison Matthews expressed concerns around future actions FOS may take with regard to the duty.
“There is always the difficulty of the FOS overlay,” Matthews said.
“With the best will in the world, we don’t know what the FOS is going to say in any particular case.
“And I think it’s almost inevitable that the FOS will take some views that are not necessarily consistent with what we might regard as the right regulatory outcomes.”