The Financial Ombudsman Service (FOS) hit just two of its key outcome targets over the last financial year, however it did reduce its caseload substantially from 163,000 to around 110,000 at the end of March 2022, which had further reduced to 78,000 by the end of September.
Business satisfaction with FOS’s service increased by eight percentage points to hit its target of 80% and the ombudsman also hit its target for consumer awareness – 91% against a target of 80%.
Overall the FOS resolved 219,000 cases during the year while it received 165,000 – 84% of complaints were decided with an informal view by an investigator, down from 87% in 2020/21.
It upheld 39% of complaints and published 29,318 final decisions, bringing the total to more than 280,634 decisions published since 2013 and up from 28,053 in 2020/21.
However, the regulator’s annual report showed FOS missed its target for the remainder of its key outcome targets.
It resolved 99% of complaints it could progress that were older than 18 months – narrowly missing its 100% target; staff retention was 73.4%, below a target of 82% though this figure includes planned redundancies – excluding planned redundancies the target was exceeded.
FOS also missed both its key outcome targets for consumer satisfaction with the report revealing 36% consumer satisfaction for non-upheld cases against a target of 45% and 88% consumer satisfaction for upheld cases – below its 90% target.
FOS chief executive and chief ombudsman Abby Thomas highlighted that the significant changes required to build a service fit for the future were underway.
“While there is much that remains to be done, I am looking forward to ensuring we deliver for all our customers,” she said.
“We are proud of our record of fairness and impartiality, and the quality of our decision‑making.
“However, we have struggled over recent years to resolve cases as quickly as we would like. The number of cases awaiting resolution is critically important to us.”
Thomas added: “Our fundamental challenge is to maintain the fairness and impartiality of decision making that characterises our organisation while significantly improving our efficiency and achieving financial sustainability. We have made much progress in 2021/22.”