The Channel Islands Financial Ombudsman (CIFO) has today (6 February 2017) published complaint numbers for the fourth quarter of 2016 and has opened a consultation period on the proposed 2017 levies payable by financial services providers.
Q4 complaint numbers
CIFO’s primary role is to resolve complaints about financial services provided in or from Jersey, Guernsey, Alderney and Sark. Highlights from the latest report on complaint numbers are shown below and more detail can be found in the full report on CIFO’s website www.ci-fo.org.
In the fourth quarter, October – December 2016, CIFO received 223 complaints, compared to 135, 118 and 812 in the first three quarters of 2016.
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, 90 new case
files were opened – these are complaints that are within CIFO’s mandate. In the previous periods the numbers of new case files opened were 59, 48 and 34. Dominant themes in these new case files related to investments, financial advice and mis-selling:
- over three-quarters of the new case files opened were in the area of investments/funds;
- three-quarters of case files concerned financial advice services, with current accounts the next most complained-about product or service, at 8% (or 1 in 12) of case files opened;
- the issue raised by complainants in over three-quarters of cases related to mis-selling; with poor administration or delays the next most complained-of issue (7% of case files opened).
During October – December 2016, CIFO closed 129 complaints. In the previous periods, CIFO closed 76, 108 and 798 complaints.
Of the closed complaints:
- 76% (98) could not be dealt with as they were outside the scope of CIFO’s mandate as set by law;
- 5% (7) were withdrawn by the complainant after coming to CIFO;
- 2% (3) were resolved by the financial services provider (FSP) after coming to CIFO;
- 11% (14) were successfully mediated by case handlers; and
- 5% (7) were determined by the Ombudsman.
Principal Ombudsman Douglas Melville said: “We are pleased to be publishing our fourth quarterly report on complaint numbers, as part of our firm commitment to transparency in the performance of CIFO’s important public interest mandate. These statistics give the headline information about our work for the last three months of 2016 and show it was a busy period, particularly for new complaints about investments and issues of mis-selling. The 2016 CIFO annual report will give a fuller analysis of the year’s complaints, drawing out any inferences or considerations, whether for CIFO or other stakeholders, and we expect to issue the annual report in Q2 of 2017.”
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