Just three adviser complaints at FSCL – so far

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The country's largest disputes resolution scheme dealt with just three complaints involving financial advisers over the first six months of the year.

Wednesday, October 19th 2011, 7:00AM 3 Comments

In its first annual report, Financial Services Complaints Ltd (FSCL) said it handled two complaints involving insurance brokers and one involving a mortgage broker.

FSCL chief executive Susan Taylor said she was surprised at the low level of complaints - FSCL received 250 telephone enquiries and investigated 35 cases, resolving 20 with 15 by negotiated agreement - but that she expected complaint numbers to rise.

Taylor said that at present she believed there was very little consumer awareness about the new financial regime in operation.

"I think as time goes on and hopefully consumer awareness increases, generally speaking complaints will rise across the board," she said.

One other factor Taylor cited for the low level of complaints - especially against advisers - was that FSCL was only reporting on completed investigations between December 2010 and June.

"It's a fairly small window of time and of course a lot of advisers didn't have to register and become fully compliant until the end of March this year, so I guess the chances for them to have a complaint that becomes fully deadlocked, in other words had been right through their internal complaints, come to us and complete our investigation by the end of June, we weren't going to be reporting very high volumes."

Insurers held the dubious honour of being the most complained against with 13 complaints, followed by lenders (six), stockbrokers and trustees (four each) and credit unions (three).

Taylor said she was proud of the fact FSCL was the largest disputes resolution scheme in the country with 4,000 participants and that over the next 12 months the organisation aimed to promote the value of complaints handling to members.

"Complaints can provide you with a lot of valuable business intelligence," she said.

"Research from overseas has shown that if you handle a complaint well, if you recognise the complaint and handle it well, your customer will go out and tell their friends and colleagues what a great firm you've been to deal with."

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