It is taking the Financial Ombudsman years to process my complaint

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noseynu

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Here is my experience of delays....I lodged a complaint mid-July 2024, which was referred to legal services in early September 24 and now, mid March 25, I continue to wait (6.5mths to date) for my complaint to be assigned to a legal services officer - the delays are well in excess of their 18 weeks estimated timeframe - they are very backlogged. Does anyone know how long a full legal assessment takes once the legal services officer has been assigned to the complaint?
 
I am concerned as I cannot retire until the pension issues (my employers historical errors) are sorted.
 
I have been in this process for nearly six years shocking system. Will have to wait another two years for final decision. The most inefficient service I have seen. Favours the banks.
 
FSPO was given funding to recruit extra staff by the government has this been successful ?
We have a complaint re our mortgage and we told last year it would be between 9 and 13 months for a reply , we are now in the middle of that timeframe and hope to have our complaint sorted .
To quote something Brendan Burgess often says "get on with our lives "

Its easy bash the FSPO for delays but since the terms and conditions in the Public Service were changed in 2012 recruitment and retention has become an issue , look at other sectors , health , education and the Defence Forces .
 
CorkHome2022 said:
Its easy bash the FSPO for delays but since the terms and conditions in the Public Service were changed in 2012 recruitment and retention has become an issue , look at other sectors , health , education and the Defence Forces .
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There are at least two former FSPO staff currently working in PTSB in their 'FSPO-complaints' section, so its no wonder that a)the FSPO have issues with Staff retention and b) they know all the tricks of the trade with delayed emails, 11th hour 1-month extensions for this that or the other etc.

Get on with your lives is right.

(Currently in year 3 of the process - & under Legal Review)
 
Re DmCC24

The reason Banks can poach is the former employees are no longer on the post 2012 Public Sector Pension scheme , are not paying all those other deductions related to it , have a higher salary etc .
This is occurring across the public sector .

As regards the "get on with your lives bit " , FSPO is having to go through a lot of vexatious ill founded complaints and those with genuine ones are held up as a result , some people seem to think FSPO can get you absolved of your legitimate debts , it cannot and even if they find in your favour no matter how bad you were messed over by your bank your not picking up punitive compensation .

Like you, we are are 3 years into our complaint process so I hear you on that .
 
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Is much of the delay due to Tracker Cases which have no merit that are clogging up the system ?
I done a search of the FSPO Decisions Database for 2025 regarding mortgages.
The result had 75 decisions
52 of those decisions complaints of not offering a tracker at point of sale or during the mortgage .
Alot of these were grasping at straws at best , ultimately it was in your own interest to seek independent advice re taking out your mortgage.

A few weeks on from the Prime Time show we can see its been replaced in the news cycle and I think its been made 10 years too late.

FSPO should have a triage system to resolve issues faster and be honest with complainants where a case has no chance of winning or where its arguing points already lost in similar cases.
In the same way where a complaint is similar to ones where the has been a case upheld these could also be speeded up .
Its not necessary to reinvent the wheel for every journey.
 
A situation crying out for the use of AI, a relatively simple 'expert system' which stops cases with no merit dead in their tracks and lets more complex, meritorious, cases to proceed. This could be done at the point of initiation of a complaint with no human intervention required based on a series on Q&A interactions with a computer-based front-end.

I was writing successful proposals for this use of AI 40+ years ago. Find me a couple or three recognised experts, let me interview them independently and build the rule base.

€150,000 for hardware, software and a coder to build, design, refine, and run the initial rule base, €300,000,000 for knowing how to productionise it and pull it all together.
 
CorkHome2022 said:
In the same way where a complaint is similar to ones where the has been a case upheld these could also be speeded up .
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I have made this point to them numerous times.

If I complain "Well Bank of Ireland didn't offer me a tracker but they had trackers at the time."
They should reply:
"Dear Brendan
Here is Case number 1024 which seems to be identical to yours. We must assess every case on its merits but you will need to advance new arguments on the issue or produce evidence of circumstances specific to your case to proceed."

It would help if the Ombudsman named the institution in the decisions.
 
CorkHome2022 said:
Like you, we are are 3 years into our complaint process so I hear you on that .
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And once more, like the above, There goes another three months.

The Next step (that was days away on the Friday of the Ryder Cup) will 'hopefully' be delivered before the year end.

With what looks like zero accountability, this service would be better off not existing rather than providing such false hope.

3 Years, 11 months and counting.
 
Hello,

Out of curiosity, has anyone made a formal complaint to the Ombudsman's office, about their service level ?

If so, how did it go ?
 
MrEarl said:
has anyone made a formal complaint to the Ombudsman's office, about their service level ?
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Yes, we did. Net result is no difference whatsoever but at least you are dealing with people that take on the notion of customer service and reply to your update requests in a more meaningful manner and do take a few phone calls once you're not pestering them.

That said, for all the talk that the complainant (on FSPO service) is with the Ombudsman and his advisor for review/ comment/ consideration, i don't believe that it has made a dint on the timeline. We are currently awaiting a Preliminary Opinion on jurisdiction regarding certain questions raised by us. This request was made in September '24 and sat still for 6 months. we are not expecting its release before y/e at this point.

I would hate to have seen if the questions raised were particularly difficult.

All told 3 Years, 10 months now.
 
By way of update.

Decision on Jurisdiction (further to a Legal Review) received in June ‘26.

Notified at that point that there would now be a delay of c.9.5 months for the reappointment of an investigator. File gathers dust in the interim.

The other update that was offered was that:-

For other files where a Preliminary Decision was issued to the parties during Quarter 2 of 2024, the average period for the adjudication work that preceded the release of those decisions, was 13.5 months.

Who’s to know how long this piece of string might be but I’m confident that there’s a further two years to run on this (ie 9.5 months of nothing and 13.5 months, for a Prelim decision to issue) bringing the entire omnishambles to 6 years.
 
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DMcC24 said:
Preliminary Decision received in June ‘26.

Notified at that point that there would now be a delay of c.9.5 months for the reappointment of an investigator.
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Can you explain this.
You got a Preliminary Decision.
Whoever "lost" made a submission on the Preliminary Decision.
Are they saying that whoever issued the Preliminary Decision has left the building, so they need to appoint someone new to reinvestigate it?
 
DMcC24 said:
For other files where a Preliminary Decision was issued to the parties during Quarter 2 of 2024, the average period for the adjudication work that preceded the release of those decisions, was 13.5 months.
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That reply from the Ombudsman is disingenuous.
1) It refers to just one quarter which may or may not be representative of the average on all Preliminary Decisions.
2) they refer to the Adjudication Work. That excludes the many years between the submission of the complaint, through the appointment of a mediator, through the mediation process, through the appointment of an investigator, through the investigation itself, through the exchange of the bank's and the complainant's responses to the appointment of an adjudicator through to the commencement of the adjudication work.
 
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