The Ombudsman unplugged

The Ombudsman Unplugged

Walter Merricks the Financial Services Ombudsman was our guest at the Society of Consumer Affairs Professionals Christmas Lunch, 6th December 2007 at the Groucho Club Dean Street, Soho London W1

We listened to a master of communication at the peak of his profession and ours – complaint handling. Not just financial services people, but all of us whatever business we are in, benefitted from Walter’s insights both personal and professional in a small, exclusive and informal setting.

Walter Merricks is Britain’s Mr Big in the complaint stakes. He was our first Financial Services Ombudsman, appointed in 1999 and the year ending 31 March 2007 marked the completion of over half a million financial disputes since the service began operating in April 2000.

The great thing about Walter is that he has never allowed the numbers to dominate his thinking about complaints. The temptation as a manager to see the Financial Ombudsman Service as the biggest complaints factory in the world is clear when you look at statistics like these taken from the FOS 2007 Annual Report:

627,814 initial enquiries and complaintsHandled by our front-line customer contact division

94,392 new casesReferred to our adjudicators and ombudsmen for further dispute-resolution work

104,831 cases resolved by our adjudicatorsBy mediation, recommended settlements and adjudications

6,842 cases resolved by our ombudsmen

But as he wrote earlier this year, Walter understands that some complainants find the service ‘insensitive even callous’ He cited the case of a young widow whose complaint about life insurance he was unable to uphold. She called him “heartless and unfeeling”. Walter appreciates that the challenges of the organisation that for many is their final port of call in the search for what they think is right and fair, are as much about the human element as they are about the organisation of the processes of escalated complaint handling.

What does Walter think have been his major successes looking back over 10 years of Ombudsman experience? Has he seen any evidence that complainant handling has got better? What are the big issues that he thinks will come out of the major review of the service being carried out by Lord Hunt?

How has it worked for him being ‘the honest broker and candid friend’ of the financial services industry which was how he described his role.