FOS believes the decision will benefit the vast majority of intermediaries who rarely have complaints made against them.
The FOS budget also shows that the costs of handling complaints at the ombudsman have continued to fall. The average cost of resolving a dispute - the ombudsman service's "unit cost" - has dropped from £753 three years ago to £507 (the budget figure for 2004/05).
The reduction in the cost of handling complaints results from continued productivity improvements and the fact that the fixed costs of the ombudsman service are spread over the much larger number of complaints that it now handles. By the end of this financial year (March 2004) the ombudsman service expects to have resolved and closed around 80,000 complaints (around half relating to mortgage endowments). This total is a 40% increase on the number of complaints resolved last year. Next year (2004/05) it expects to resolve 88,000 disputes - the highest number ever.
The ombudsman service is particularly interested in feedback on its planning assumptions for the level of complaints it should expect to receive next year.
