United Kingdom (and EU regulation)

The FOS at fifteen – lessons from the past, looking to the future

The Financial Ombudsman Service (FOS) has published its annual review for 2014/15.

The statistics in the annual review include:

since 2001 the FOS has answered 15 million consumer enquiries and taken on 2.8 million disputes between financial businesses and their customers;
the FOS answered 1.8 million enquiries and resolved 448,000 cases in 2014/2015 – compared to 400,000 enquiries and 30,000 cases in 2000/2001;
payment protection insurance made up two-thirds of all complaints in 2014/15 – the same proportion as the mortgage endowment workload at its peak a decade ago;
during 2014/15 the FOS resolved one in five pay day lending complaints using only its web chat service; and
55% of the cases resolved in 2014/15 were found in the consumer’s favour.