Complaint stages at FOS

When we take a case to the Financial Ombudsman Service (FOS), there are two stages your case goes through: 

Stage 1 - Investigator: The first stage is that your case is considered by an investigator. They will review the case and will put forward what they believe is the most reasonable resolution to your complaint. Most cases are resolved at this stage. The opinion of an Investigator is not binding, so either party can appeal if they are not happy with the outcome.

Stage 2 - Ombudsman: If either party is unhappy with the outcome reached by the Investigator and appeals, the case will then be reviewed by an Ombudsman, who is a more senior member of staff. Their decision is final, so there is no appeal after this. Once they issue their decision, the case is closed and this is the end of the process. If you accept a final decision from an Ombudsman, it is legally binding on you and the bank.

Outcomes from Investigators (Stage 1)

Partial Upholds from Investigators:

After the investigator has reviewed the case, they will provide us with their opinion. This will outline their investigation and ultimately their findings of what they think the outcome of the complaint should be. 

In some cases, the refund amount is a percentage of the total amount lost. This is called a “Partial Uphold”. When you receive a partial uphold outcome, it means that the investigator agrees that the bank could have done more, and so has upheld your case, but for a variety of reasons, not all the transactions will be considered or fully refunded. 

We will put this offer to you, usually with advice on if we think that the view is fair and in line with other outcomes we have been seeing in similar cases to yours. The bank you have complained about will also be sent the Investigator’s opinion to consider. 

Both you and the bank will have the opportunity to appeal or to accept this view. Both you and the bank have to accept in order for the case to be closed and the refund paid to you. 

Asking the Investigator to reconsider:

In some cases, we may disagree with certain aspects of the view, and we may advise you that we can provide the investigator with more information and ask them to reconsider their outcome. 

We would reply to the investigator and explain why we do not agree with their findings, and offer some more points and arguments for them to consider. Sometimes, this will be going into more detail about a vulnerability that we feel has not been properly considered, or arguing that the regulation has not been applied in the way we would expect it to have been. 

The investigator will then have time to consider the points we have raised, to see if their view on the case, and therefore the outcome, should change. This can add another few weeks or sometimes months to the case depending on how far it is taken. 

It is rare that at this stage an investigator would reconsider their view, but in some cases we believe that it is worth doing this before taking the case to a full appeal. 

If the investigator does not agree with the arguments we have made at this point, and you still do not want to accept the previous view, we will request a ‘Final Decision’ from the Ombudsman. 

Appealing to an Ombudsman (Stage 2):

When we ask for a Final Decision (an Ombudsman review) your case will again be put in a queue to be allocated. This can be a few weeks to a few months - depending on how many cases are being appealed, but we often see them take up to 6 months. At the moment, we are seeing more cases being appealed by the banks, so we anticipate that the wait will more likely be months. 

Once your case is being investigated by an Ombudsman, the previous offer is taken off the table and a completely new investigation is conducted. Therefore, if your case is taken to appeal, it means that you could have the same, a better or worse outcome. We will always inform you of what we think your chances are and whether we think the initial outcome was fair.

When we receive the Final Decision from the Ombudsman, we will again contact you to let you know the outcome of their investigation. You will be asked if you would like to accept or decline the outcome. 

If you accept, this becomes legally binding on the bank and they have to refund the amount suggested by the Ombudsman in their Final Decision. 

The Final Decision is anonymised as these are published on their website, so your identity will never be revealed. 

Ombudsman Provisional Decisions:

Occasionally, rather than sending you a Final, binding Decision, the Ombudsman will send a Provisional Decision - This is essentially the Ombudsman telling us what they believe their Final Decision will be and is a final call for commentary. They often do this when they are reaching a different view from the Investigator. This is sent to both Refundee and the bank. Whilst we can add further arguments, it is extremely unlikely that this would change the Ombudsman's view.