New guidelines for dealing with endowment complaints have been published by the Financial Service Om...
New guidelines for dealing with endowment complaints have been published by the Financial Service Ombudsman (FSO), in a bid to encourage firms to resolve complaints with customers without FSO intervention.
The guidelines, which follow the recent flood of complaints to the FSO regarding mortgage endowments, list 30 complaints that can be used as a reference guide to judge what may account for a valid claim.
According to the list, customers with complaints, such as being led to believe the policy was guaranteed to pay off the mortgage early or produce a lump sum in excess of the loan amount, could be entitled to compensation.
Template questionnaires have been designed for firms to use with customers when resolving complaints by themselves and also to brief potential complainants on what questions they may be asked, are also included in the new guidelines.
David Cresswell, head of communications at the FSO, said the new guidelines are there to increase transparency in the complaints process and minimise the amount of complaints that would have to be dealt with by the FSO, by encouraging the parties concerned to come to an agreement by themselves.
'This is the first time the FSO has been this transparent. In the past, customers have come to the FSO without knowing what to expect about the stages of the complaints procedure. We now deal with such a variety of matters that it is important to show consistency,' he said.
'Due to the huge volume of endowment complaints, we recognised the need to move to a more industrialised process aimed at helping both sides of the complaint resolve the situation, so that only a small number of complaints need to come to the FSO for a formal decision. By being so transparent, we hope that more customers will have a good idea of how we will deal with their case and what questions we will ask before they come to us,' Cresswell added.
