Complaint handling

Our complaints handling service is comprehensive and fully-scalable. Our team is able to handle complaints in any volumes and with any attributes – whether complex individual cases or mass cohorts.

We handle all aspects of complaints-related communications, including with customers (Final Response Letters - FRLs), the Financial Ombudsman Service (FOS), the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA), investors and other stakeholders. We also advise on firms’ internal communications relating to complaints such as fact finding and “lessons learned”, policy and procedural change, and training. Our fact-finding work includes a complaints handling “health check” review.

We have a unique blend of expertise for end-to-end support in relation to the complaints handling journey. Our team includes a former FOS Ombudsman and ex-regulator as well as experts in the regulation and risk management of consumer-facing financial services – including banking, claims management, consumer credit, funeral plans, insurance, and investments. We also advise on emerging themes in complaints such as the risks of ‘ESG’-related complaints including ‘greenwashing’.

Our areas of expertise include systems and controls for complaints governance and compliance – including within the context of the Consumer Duty, Operational Resilience and Vulnerable Customer regimes – and the practical (responsive or pre-emptive) resolution of complaints and the issues to which they can give rise.

Our solutions are tailored to each client’s risk appetite and business model, enabling it to resolve complaints promptly and fairly, meeting both commercial and regulatory obligations.

Services we can provide on a discrete or combined basis, working alongside clients’ existing compliance, governance, legal and risk functions, include:

• Customer - facing communications from the first expression of dissatisfaction to final response letters (FRLs) and subsequent dialogue;
• root cause analysis (including evidential, contextual and statistical evaluations) with a particular focus on customer outcomes, consumer understanding and other requirements under the Consumer Duty;
• designing and implementing customer contact exercises and remediation programmes including complaint handling frameworks to deliver the proper resolution of individual complaints and consistency across complaint cohorts;
• tracking updates on key FOS decisions and advising on likely FOS and FCA responses to individual, or cohorts of, complaints; 
• responding to FOS decisions, including considerations as to the Judicial Review of adverse final decisions; and

• a dedicated helpline to our specialist team.

Please contact one of our expert team to discuss how we can support you.