Background

You may have received a communication recently from the Financial Ombudsman Service (“FOS”) about a decision they reached some time ago about a complaint you made to them about a lender’s decision not to give you compensation for missold payment protection insurance (“PPI”).

When your lender rejected your complaint to them, we did not think this was fair.  This was because – in our opinion – the lender had not considered information that we believed would have caused them to come to a different decision.

When your complaint was turned down, on your behalf we then took your complaint to FOS, as you are entitled to do.  A FOS adjudicator agreed with your lender’s decision and did not uphold your complaint.  

We then appealed the FOS adjudicator’s decision.  WFAC asked an Ombudsman to look again at the decision made by the FOS adjudicator.

FOS’ Communication to WFAC Customers

A large number of cases have now built up at FOS which will take them some time to work through.  In an attempt to reduce this caseload, earlier this year FOS wrote to WFAC customers impacted by this to ask if they really wanted a FOS Ombudsman to review their adjudicator’s decision.  You can see a copy of their communication here.

Your Response to FOS’ Communication

You have a right to insist that an Ombudsman look again at your case if you believe that something material has not been considered which might change the outcome.  However, WFAC cannot advise whether you should insist that an Ombudsman review your case.  You must make that decision.

If you do want to do this, we have prepared a suggested response which may be useful.  You can see a copy of this here.  You do not have to use this if you don’t want to; you are completely free to respond in any way that you think is appropriate.  But we believe that this template may help if you are not sure how you should respond to the FOS communication.

If you use this template and send it back to FOS, they will assign an Ombudsman to your case who will review this again to see if their original decision still stands.  WFAC cannot tell you how long this process will take.  FOS has a heavy caseload so it may be quite some time (we would expect many months) before a decision is reached.  This may mean that you do not hear anything for a long time.  We apologise for this but hope you will accept that this is not something that WFAC can control.