UK Financial Ombudsman Service registers drop in enquiries about securities in 2019/20
The number of ombudsman resolutions of disputes about derivatives amounted to 122, down 26% from a year earlier.
The UK Financial Ombudsman Service (FOS) has published the 2019/20 figures about its work.
FOS received over 270,000 new complaints about financial businesses in the 2019/20 financial year, with PPI remaining the most complained about product, with over 122,000 complaints about PPI received by the service, including a spike in complaints following the FCA’s August deadline for consumers to complain to businesses about PPI.
There were year-on-year increases in the number of complaints about instalment loans (10,880 complaints received in 2019/20), guarantor loans (1,043 complaints received in 2019/20) and point of sale loans (4,667 complaints received in 2019/20).
Overall in 2019/20 the Financial Ombudsman Service received fewer complaints than in the 2018/19 financial year. This was mainly due to a reduction in the number of complaints about PPI and short-term lending.
FOS handled 1,189 enquiries about securities in 2019/20, down 22% from a year earlier. The enquiries about stockbroking were 956, a decrease of 36% from the previous year.
New cases about derivatives (including spread betting and interest rate hedging) were 222 in 2019/20, a drop of 41% from the previous year.
Ombudsman resolutions of disputes about derivatives amounted to 122, down 26% from a year earlier. The percentage of complaints about derivatives upheld was 24% compared to 18% in the preceding year.
Let’s recall that earlier this year the FOS announced an increase to award limits. From April 1, 2020, the award limits changed to £355,000 for complaints referred to FOS on or after April 1, 2020 about acts or omissions by firms on or after April 1, 2019.
