25% increase in number of pension complaints received by FSPO

Commenting on the conducts giving rise to complaints to the FSPO in 2022, the Financial Services and Pensions Ombudsman, Liam Sloyan, said: “Customer service remains the highest proportion of complaints in 2022, accounting for 28% of complaints. This is a disappointing increase from what was already a significant volume in 2021, at 23% of complaints. Customer service issues can include a provider’s failure to provide information, complaint handling issues and accessibility and communication issues. Many of the consumers making complaints to the FSPO could have had their complaints addressed by their provider, at an earlier point in time. I encourage all providers of financial services and pension products, to adopt an approach of seeking, where possible, to resolve complaints quickly with their customers. This is both in the interests of the complainant and the provider. In many cases, complaints are resolved promptly when the provider receives an initial contact from the FSPO. This Overview serves as a resource for all those who can have an impact on the financial services and pension environment, and I would encourage providers to reflect on the nature of complaints brought to this Office.”


Mismanagement.

Press Release

Some of this increase could be as a result of people reading askaboutmoney and learning how to escalate their complaint to the FSPO.

No, it's mismanagement.

Maladministration and poor service has been gradually increasing every year and it's now at the point of chaos.

If you're being rewarded for selling as much as you can with no consequences for the terribly unfair workload that that puts on admin staff (never mind trying to recruit/retain them) and as a result the FSPO then you're going to continue in that thread.

What we're seeing is only the tip of the iceberg. Find me an intermediary who hasn't spent more and more of their time trying to resolve Maladministration issues for clients that should, in my opinion, be on the desk of the FSPO.

It's still just a numbers game to the actuary/accounting management teams. What can we get away with without harming our bottom line. Very frustrating for those in management that can see through this and for intermediaries and their customers alike.

There appears to be no consequence for this from Central Bank of Pensions Authority point of view. If it was a 25% spike in complaints against an intermediary they be doing an audit on Fitness & Probity.

Surely these complaints, presumably many of which are upheld, result in a financial hit to the Provider?

It's turned into a game.

From the Ombudsman's comments you can interpret what's happening.

Gradual increase in maladministration, attitude of providers is - Hey we're sorry that it took you six months to get an apology from us for the obviously multiple terrible service issues that we just don't want to fix, because it's all about sales and new business for us. So here's a letter for the Ombudsman.

If the customer has the time and inclination they'll take it further. But, the providers know that a large percentage of them won't.

What the Ombudsman is saying is - on the cases that do come to us - These cases shouldn't be ending up with us. They should be dealt with by the provider. The provider should know, at this stage, that we're going to find in the customers favour, that multiple errors were made and that they've wasted hours of the customers time in resolving something that shouldn't have happened. Don't waste our time as well so offer them some level of compensation for your mistakes instead of waiting for us to make a judgement in their favour.

Recently had a case where a 3 year old error was flagged with the provider but never addressed. Same error created a huge amount of work for the client to fix at their end. Complaint lodged but provider decided to lable it as 'level 2' so there was never going to be an Ombudsman's final letter. Had to insist on the 'level 1' status and in the end a compensation offer was made.

Institutions aren't making decisions on how to handle complaints , managers are. I think that there's a bit of work to be done by Central Bank on auditing the entire complaints processes within providers. It just doesn't add up as to why the product providers are so reluctant to fix their servicing issues.

GSheehy said:

Recently had a case where a 3 year old error was flagged with the provider but never addressed. Same error created a huge amount of work for the client to fix at their end. Complaint lodged but provider decided to lable it as 'level 2' so there was never going to be an Ombudsman's final letter. Had to insist on the 'level 1' status and in the end a compensation offer was made.

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All the more reason to clearly state at the start that you are making your complaint under their IDR procedure.

S class said:

All the more reason to clearly state at the start that you are making your complaint under their IDR procedure.

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You're completely missing the point. There was no need to log the flagged error 3 years ago. It was a glaring mistake at policy issue and the provider was told to correct it.

But, they didn't do that. They ignored the request, as is common. When it came to light that it want addressed it was logged as a formal complaint. They thought they could fix it immediately without taking into consideration the amount of work that everyone else had to do. This is a constant theme - There's never enough time to do it right be always enough time to do it over. It's a failure on managements part to properly train staff.

The person that was handling it put their hands up and admitted they made a mistake in the severity of the issue.

It had nothing whatsoever to do with quoting IDR.