The Financial Ombudsman Service (the “FOS”) are the UK’s largest free alternative dispute resolution service. They came into being after the government disbanded the Financial Service Authority in 2013, and the Financial Conduct Authority (the “FCA”) took over as the UK's financial services regulator.
The FOS was given its power to arbitrate by the FCA, and its primary objective was to provide a free service to consumers who felt the banks and other large financial institutions had unfairly treated them.
There is currently no cost to take a complaint to the FOS, but they do not work in the same way as a court,t hey must, however, give due consideration to relevant law where applicable. The FOS says this about their approach to consumer complaints on their website:
If we look at the FOS' approach to consumer complaints and timeshare mis-selling claims, claims which they have been deliberating on for nine years, one would say their service is far from 'fair' or consumer-friendly. Making consumers wait nine years for an outcome to their complaints is by no means ‘fair’.
They also say that they are impartial. Although the High Court upheld the FOS’ view that fractional timeshares had been missold after a nine-year wait, the FOS have made it as difficult as they could for the timeshare consumers and their representatives. This does not support their claims of ‘impartiality’.
We do not have to try too hard to substantiate what we think about their 'fairness' and 'impartiality', as we have the written testimony straight to underpin our thinking.
FINANCIAL OMBUDSMAN SERVICE = THE ‘CUT & PASTE’ ARBITER
We have recently become aware of content on Glassdoor, the online website where former and current employees can write comments about their work experience at different companies.
Below are posts from staff of all pay grades working at the FOS, and these below are just a tiny selection of posted comments that appear at https://www.glassdoor.co.uk/Reviews/Financial-Ombudsman-Service-Reviews-E477438.htm.
James is responsible for leading our Ombudsman and Investigations teams in delivering high-quality investigations.
James joined us in October 2022 from the Information Commissioner Office, where he was Deputy Commissioner and Chief Regulating Officer, leading their regulatory service.
James has also worked as an Operations Director for the Parliamentary and Health Service Ombudsman, Commissioner for North West England Police Forces and Director of Investigation and Supervision for the Solicitor’s Regulation Authority (England and Wales). James also held the role of Independent Assessor for Ombudsman Services.
This is what Mr Dipple-Johnstone said upon being appointed Chief Ombudsman.
James Dipple-Johnstone said:
I’m excited to take up this role with the Financial Ombudsman, which gives me the opportunity to help maintain public trust in the UK financial services sector by delivering a fair and impartial complaints and investigations service. I’m committed to bringing improvements to people’s lives by delivering positive outcomes for the service.
Mr Dipple-Johnstone believes that the FOS has public trust. This is, in our opinion, debatable. In fact, it is based upon his own assumption. We doubt that the FOS have any public trust, and the online dissent toward this organisation supports this opinion.
He believes his organisation is ‘fair and impartial’. This is, in our opinion, another delusional statement from the Chief Ombudsman. The FOS are far from ‘fair and impartial’, and their appalling track record over the intervening nine years proves otherwise.
Mr Dipple-Johnstone is responsible for ensuring teams at the FOS deliver ‘high quality’ investigations.
**PLEASE NOTE THE TEXT IN ITALICS BELOW IS COPIED FROM GLASSDOOR
Below is what one of his team members says about him. Source: https://www.glassdoor.co.uk/Reviews/Financial-Ombudsman-Service-Reviews-E477438.htm
16 Aug 2023
A crumbling organisation that feels like it's crumbling
Team Manager
Current Employee, more than eight years
London, England
Recommend
CEO Approval
Business Outlook
Pros
Flexible working, good salaries for OM, OL and above.
Cons
Pretty much everything else you can think of.
Advice to Management
More for potential applicants as management won't take advice from here. This is an organisation to avoid right now. The current exec hasn’t done well with anything since they started, but the problems began long before their appointment, with the introduction of the 'investigations model' seven years ago. The feedback at the outset was that the model was flawed, but that was ignored and even suppressed.
They took the Bambi approach to feedback – if you haven't anything nice to say, then don't say anything. Year after year poor performance and building case queues followed. An external report was commissioned (Oaklin), and it laid the problems at the service squarely on the new model. That should have been the point of turnaround.
However, instead of looking externally for the way forward, they returned in-house. It's a bit like asking the fox how to rebuild the chicken coup. The real issue is there are significant numbers of OLs and OM’s who do very nicely out of the new model, thank you—taking salaries way beyond their talent and contribution levels.
They won’t rock the boat. They are being an ombudsman used to mean something – legally trained and qualified to make fair decisions. There are still some very good ones, but there is an exponentially growing number of inadequate ones. Most ombudsmen now refer to one of the new execs by supplanting part of his surname with the word ‘nipple’ tells you all you need to know about their calibre—many copy-and-pasting, templated generic outcomes.
If the service just used an AI bot to produce the answers to complaints, you'd see very little or no difference in huge savings. In the past couple of years, the service created the high–volume area operated under the old model – ombudspersons were allowed to be ombudsmen, focussed on the technical. And team managers driving performance from larger teams. This area delivered by some distance the best output performance in the permanent organisation both years. This area has now been made redundant.
The service doesn't listen and doesn't want to see. The values are paper thin and not applicable to their own staff. And the whole place is propped up by an ineffective and quite frankly lost HR dept. There are some good people left, and I wish them all well – but the service has shown it cannot change itself. Only by the intervention of the treasury select committee or the FCA might this become a good place to work again. A real shame from what it once was.
A FOS Team Manager wrote the above review with eight years of ongoing service. The review is most damming as to what is happening at the FOS.
The beach loving, beer swigging, Graham Stride-Noble is another prominent name from those dealing with timeshare claims at the FOS. We believe Mr Stride-Noble is ultimately responsible for the management of timeshare claims and is at a higher management level in the FOS.
It would be fair to say that the blame for the delays of nine years of waiting for timeshare victims of UK bank misselling is exacerbated by the mismanagement and total lack of empathy shown by Mr Stride-Noble towards these claimants.
Mr Stride-Noble continues, through his management role at the FOS, to deny these claimants a final resolution to their nine years of waiting. Even following an eighteen-month Judicial Review process and a High Court victory in favour of the consumer, Stride-Noble’s department and the UK banks Barclays Partner Finance, Shawbrook Bank, and Novuna Personal Finance are still rejecting timeshare claims, thus prolonging the wait time for these elderly, vulnerable timeshare victims.
Under the watchful eye of Mr Stride-Noble, his investigators are allowed to produce initial views in ‘CUT & PASTE’ formats, rejecting timeshare claims by the sack load to be put into a very long queue to be reviewed by an Ombudsman, thus prolonging consumer detriment.
We have also discovered that the banks who are rejecting claims are using the very same paragraphs in their rejection letters that are then also used in the FOS’ decisions. We believe that this is evidence that the FOS and banks are colluding to thwart consumers’ claims.
Is this what the FOS consider to be ‘impartial and fair’?
If you or someone you know has been a victim of UK Bank’s mis-selling financial products and have presented a mis-selling claim to them or the Financial Ombudsman Service and you think you have been mistreated, we want to hear from you.
Please email us with your story in strict confidence at fos@timeshare-banking-scandal.co.uk
If we feel we can publicise your story, we will contact you.
If you currently work or have previously worked at Financial Ombudsman Services and want to be a Whistleblower, you are entitled to anonymity under the Public Interest Disclosure Act 1998
CONTACT US IN THE STRICT CONFIDENCE AT whistleblowers.fos@timeshare-banking-scandal.co.uk
This website seeks to expose the injustices of a system of quasi-law that allows the UK’s largest regulator, the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA), and their arbiter, the Financial Ombudsman Service (FOS), that fails to deliver an effective, fair and accessible Alternative Dispute Resolution to UK consumers who it is intended to protect against the inequities and misdemeanours of the financial institutions. PPI, PENSIONS and NOW TIMESHARE.