The Channel Islands Financial Ombudsman (CIFO) today (28 October 2016) published the complaint numbers for the third quarter of 2016. CIFO received 812 complaints.
Some highlights from the report are shown below, for full details of the complaints received and handled during July to September 2016 please see the report.
This was a large increase in the volume of referred complaints compared with previous quarters, largely attributable to one mass complaint situation involving two financial services providers.
The mandate or remit of CIFO is set out by law, particularly the types of financial services that can be complained about, the type of complainant that may use the service and the time limits that apply. During this period, 34 new case files were opened – these are complaints that are within CIFO’s mandate. Most were in the areas of banking or investments / funds and the top four products or services complained about were:
- Current accounts (24% of case files opened);
- Money transfer (12%);
- Health insurance (12%);
- Financial advice (12%).
The top five issues raised by complainants related to:
- Poor administration or delay (21% of case files opened);
- Closure of account (18%);
- Refusal of service (18%);
- Non-payment of claim (15%);
- Mis-selling (15%).
During July – September 2016, CIFO closed 798 complaints:
- 92% (736) could not be dealt with as they were outside the scope of CIFO’s mandate as set by law;
- 2% (14) were withdrawn by the complainant after coming to CIFO;
- 4% (32) were successfully resolved by mediation; and,
- 2% (16) were determined by the Ombudsman.
Principal Ombudsman Douglas Melville said:
- “We are pleased to be publishing our third quarterly report on complaint numbers, as part of our firm commitment to transparency in the performance of CIFO’s important public interest mandate.
- Given the unusually high complaint volumes largely due to a single mass complaint this quarter and the fact that we have only been in operation for three complete quarters, it remains too early to draw inferences or trends so these statistics are published for information and a fuller analysis of the whole year’s data will be given in the 2016 CIFO annual report which we expect to issue in Q2 of 2017.”
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