Most of the complaints concerned fees, delays, administration and factual or accounting errors," Jane Hingston said.
“We did hear predictions that we would be swamped after Mortgage Day, but it hasn’t happened and I am optimistic that it won’t happen in the future,” she told the seminar.
Hingston urged advisers to promote the service to clients as a safety net, should a mortgage case run into problems. She also stressed that the service is duty bound to take an independent view of each case, rather than be biased towards the consumer.
She said that most cases across the financial services industry are resolved informally, before they reach a formal Ombudsman’s ruling. Last year the service received more than 618,000 enquiries, of which 112,000 became cases. However only 10% of these went as far as
Ombudsman’s rulings.
“For financial advisers, the service represents consumer safety. It is free, it is impartial and it is a resource,” she said.
