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Complaint About A Financial Institution? Now it should be easier
Until recently it was difficult to decide who to complain to if you had a disagreement with a financial institution. There were several different complaint handling schemes and ombudsman schemes and many people found it all too confusing. The newly established Financial Ombudsman Service (FOS) aims to change that with the introduction of a comprehensive service integrating all eight different schemes. This will give customers a single port of call if they are unhappy with a finance related service. It will not be fully operational until later in the year. Until then the eight separate schemes will continue to handle their complaints as before but now they are all housed in the one building and each can refer complaints to one another, so if you select the wrong one it shouldn’t matter. The eight schemes included are:- The Banking Ombudsman – complaints about retail banks. The Building Societies Ombudsman – complaints about building societies. The Insurance Ombudsman – complaints about general insurance. The Investment Ombudsman – complaints about firms that manage investment funds regulated by the Investment Management Regulatory Organisation (IMRO). The Personal Insurance Arbitration Service (PIAS) – complaints about general insurance involving companies that are not members of the Insurance Ombudsman Scheme. The Personal Investment Authority (PIA) Ombudsman – complaints about financial advisers, life insurance companies etc. regulated by the PIA. The Securities and Futures Authority (SFA) Complaints Bureau – complaints about stockbrokers etc. regulated by the SFA.	The FSA direct Regulation Complaints Unit – complaints about firms that are directly regulated by the FSA. The FOS will still not be able to help you with complaints about credit cards, unsecured loans and mortgages provided by anyone other than a bank or building society. In addition, complaints about employers pension scheme will not be covered. If you have any complaints about them you need to go to the Office of the Pensions Advisory Service (OPAS)   Don't Phone Me On Holiday!   You probably know that using your mobile to phone home when you are abroad costs more than calls in the UK. This is because your phone uses a system known as roaming which means that you can be using any number of different networks as opposed to just the one as you would at home. This has to be set up before you leave the UK, it cannot be done once you arrive at your destination. However, you may not be aware of the fact that if someone calls you from the UK, they will be charged at the usual rate for calling your mobile in the UK but you will also receive a bill for receiving the call on a foreign network. Listening to any voicemail messages will also incur costs. These charges can range from just under £1 a minute in Europe to well over a £1 in the United States. Make sure the people at home know before they run up your phone bills for you.
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