Higher communication is required between the Monetary Ombudsman Service and the Monetary Conduct Authority (FCA) to handle issues within the monetary sector extra shortly, MPs have been informed.
The Monetary Ombudsman Service’s chief government Abby Thomas informed the Treasury choose committee that higher knowledge sharing between the ombudsman and the Metropolis regulator would additionally higher shield customers.
She mentioned that whereas she believed the ombudsman’s powers are adequate, the incoming client responsibility guidelines will strengthen the place of customers the place presently her organisation is unable to assist.
Learn extra: P2P companies prepared for client responsibility
Thomas informed MPs that the place the ombudsman is unable to uphold a client’s grievance it passes data to the FCA if it’s related, however mentioned she wish to see enhancements on this space to assist higher shield customers.
“What we do at current is we seize the [case] data in a single system and we flag that data out to the FCA by our working degree contacts,” Thomas mentioned to the committee, which was reported on by FT Adviser.
“I wish to take a look at alternatives to share our knowledge in a extra well timed means in order that we will have a form of early warning sign in place if we see a selected product kind, or a selected grievance kind or perhaps a specific agency that had an elevated variety of complaints in comparison with what we might count on.”
Learn extra: P2P companies “in the dead of night” over client responsibility necessities
When Thomas turned chief government of the Monetary Ombudsman Service in June 2022 it had a backlog of 158,000 complaints. This has been lowered to 29,000 instances.
To this point this 12 months the ombudsman has acquired 258,000 complaints in opposition to companies.
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