On 7 November 2018, the Financial Ombudsman Service (FOS) published issue 146 of its Ombudsman news update. The issue is entitled ‘Thinking ahead’ and focuses on:
- pensions and pension transfers; and
- defined benefit to defined contribution pension transfers.
The update also covers FOS enquiry and complaint statistics for Q2 20181/9 and feedback from its adviser roundtables. The feedback from the roundtables include responses to the following questions:
- What support do you [the FOS] provide for financial advice businesses?
- How do you make sure your [the FOS] decisions are consistent?
- I am concerned you [the FOS] apply today’s standards to advice given in the past – and why isn’t there a long stop to prevent old complaints?
- My customer complained to you [the FOS] – and even though they didn’t win their case, I still had to pay a case fee?
- If my suitability report isn’t perfect – or I can’t find a certain bit of evidence – am I certain to lose the case?
- What’s your [the FOS] approach to complaints involving financial advice and new products like social impact investing?