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FAQs

Consumer Credit

• Who is affected?
  Businesses that hold a standard Consumer Credit Licence are all affected, as is anybody who gives advice on Consumer Credit.
• When do the new regulations come into force?
  6 April 2007 - the start of the new Tax Year. It is also Good Friday so businesses affected must have provision in place by the start of the Easter break.
• Credit is not my real business; I only offer finance facilities to remain competitive. Doesn't the responsibility lie with the company actually lending the money?
  No. To offer credit, you must have a Consumer Credit Licence even if your client will borrow the money from somebody else. Consequently you will be required to have a suitable complaints procedure in place.
• What happens if I don't have a suitable complaints procedure?
  You will be breaking the law and risk incurring the wrath of your local Trading Standards officers and losing your Consumer Credit Licence. You may also be at risk of incurring a legally binding award against you by the Financial Ombudsman Service - which could be as much as £100,000.
• Can I simply wait and sort it out if and when I get a complaint?
  No. The law says you must have a written Complaints Procedure for Consumer Credit Activities and you must have the ability to put it into practice whenever a complaint is received. You cannot legally simply pay lip service to it.
• I sell insurance, investment or mortgage products. Am covered by the Complaints Procedure of the company I represent?
  If you are an employee of that Company and carry out Consumer Credit activities solely as part of that employment, you probably will be covered. However, if you simply act as its agent, you are probably not and you should check this out.
• I can't do this myself. Can I outsource it?
  Yes you can. Dispusolve has identified that, for smaller businesses, maintaining the expertise to tackle any complaints that come in will be extremely difficult. We have therefore worked hard to develop an affordable plan that ensures you have a Complaints Procedure in place, which you can call upon as and when you need to.
• We are a relatively large business and already have a dedicated Customer Service team which deals with complaints. Can it continue to deal with Consumer Credit complaints?
  That may be the most cost effective solution for you. However, unless your team already deals with the Financial Ombudsman Service, it is unlikely to be able to cope in the short term. Please contact us so we can work together to find a way forward that suits you.
• Why is Dispusolve able to handle these complaints?
  The entire Dispusolve team have considerable experience of investigating complaints falling under the jurisdiction of the Financial Ombudsman Service and are familiar with its approaches. Where appropriate, we are able to contact the Financial Ombudsman Service to discuss a complaint and get an indication of how a particular case might be viewed. We also know that the Financial Ombudsman Service welcomes reasoned arguments of the type that Dispusolve produces.
• Can you help with other types of complaint?
  Yes - we can deal with any complaints under the jurisdiction of the Financial Ombudsman Service and these techniques can normally be used to meet the requirements of other Ombudsman and arbitration schemes. Where no such scheme exists, simply telling your customer you have asked Dispusolve to investigate demonstrates that you take the complaint seriously. We will seek to capitalise on this by moving away from confrontation towards consensus whenever possible.

Financial Services

• Why can't I investigate my own complaints?
  There are two difficulties with investigating your own complaints. The first is that complaints should be investigated impartially. This is impractical if you are the individual against whom the complaint is made. By using Dispusolve, you can be seen to have done the right thing. The second is that DIY investigations are not without cost. You will need to take the time to investigate the complaint - time that could have been spent generating profit. Using Dispusolve releases you to get on with running your business.
• How can I be sure that the investigation will be of a satisfactory quality?
  To gain acceptance as a Dispusolve Financial Services Investigator, it is necessary not only to hold the Financial Planning Certificate (or equivalent) but also to be able to demonstrate the ability to dig below the surface and establish, as far as possible, what really happened at the point of sale.
• Do you use "tick boxes" to assess whether a sale was suitable?
  We most certainly do not! We do not like tick box exercises and the Financial Ombudsman Service (FOS) has told us that it does not like them either. We have developed a system, which we call a Wilson Chart, that allows us to assess each complaint point and determine whether the evidence is sufficient to uphold the complaint or not. From this, we construct draft a "Final Response Letter" (FRL), conscious that this is likely to be the starting point for any FOS adjudicator subsequently considering the case.
• Can't I leave it to my PI insurer?
  The DISP rules (ie the complaint handling procedures issued by the Financial Services Authority) state that it is your responsibility to investigate the complaint.As your insurer will also be regulated by the Financial Services and Markets Act 2000, it should realise and respect this. Nowadays, too, excesses are typically at least £5,000 and often as much as £15,000. Most redress figures are less than this and so your insurer has no incentive to defend complaints unless the redress figure is very large.
• Will you deal with our PI insurer?
  Our standard procedure, once the investigation is complete, is to e-mail you a draft FRL in Microsoft Word (.doc) or Open Document Text (.odt) format for consideration by your PI insurer, along with pdf versions of listed enclosures. This allows you to seek PI approval then send out the FRL and supporting documentation. We will seek PI approval for you if you wish but, naturally, we will charge for our time if we do.
• Do you guarantee to defend all complaints?
  We cannot provide a defence if we are unable to find the evidence to do so. However, we are experienced at teasing out what really happened and many times our investigations have shown the scales to be tipped in favour of the adviser when others thought a complaint should be upheld. In other cases, we have been able to demonstrate that the client was entitled to a considerably lower redress figure than was otherwise thought.
• Do you do fixed price investigations?
  Not normally. We are aware that some large institutions negotiate a fixed price for high volumes of a particular type of investigation, for example endowments. However, to do this, the firm carrying out the investigation will build a considerable margin of error into its charge, which its customer must pay. A form of pound cost average applies in these circumstances - you only need the average price of all your investigations to be less than the fixed rate to make an overall saving. There is also evidence that more complex investigations, which take longer to be investigated, tend to be rushed if they run beyond their allotted time, resulting in decisions being incorrectly reached. We are therefore of the view that fixed price investigations generally represent poor value for money.
• How do I know I can trust Dispusolve to treat my business fairly?
  Our business is built upon the principle of treating customers fairly. Of course, we are required to apply that principle to your customers but it also applies to you as our customer. We will always work as quickly as reasonably possible and will always weigh up the available evidence carefully. If we identify that it will be more cost effective for you to settle a complaint than for us to continue defending it, we promise to tell you.
• Can you handle all forms of financial services complaint?
  Yes - we can deal with mortgages, life and pensions, investments and general insurance, as well as Consumer Credit complaints.
• Why should I use Dispusolve?
  The Dispusolve team are all very experienced Financial Services professionals, who have specialised in complaints under the jurisdiction of the Financial Ombudsman Service. Our experience enables us to get to the heart of a complaint as quickly as possible, releasing you to run your business. We also have considerable experience in dealing with the third party complaint chasing businesses that have come into the market in recent years.
• I am a member of a network of IFAs. Why do I need Dispusolve?
  Networks investigate complaints against their members but will not normally investigate complaints relating to times when you were not a member. We can do this for you. Networks also tend to reduce complaint investigation to something of a "tick box" exercise. We do not think this appropriate for IFAs whose professional responsibilities frequently bring them into unique situations. If your network upholds a complaint against you, a second opinion from us may indicate that it should not be upheld (although even we cannot justify a sale simply because you do not like the outcome of the complaint investigation).
• Are you Solicitors?
  No - just as the Financial Ombudsman Service takes a different approach from the Courts, so we take a different approach from most Solicitors. Our investigations are, as far as possible, aligned to the stance we believe the Financial Ombudsman Service would take, formulating persuasive arguments to support our decisions and explaining to the customer why their complaint is or is not to be upheld. There is a tendency for Solicitors to overlook this requirement of the DISP regulations. We are also more experienced in this field, and a lot less expensive, than most Solicitors.
• I would still prefer a Solicitor to respond to the complainant - can this be arranged?
  Our usual approach is to draft a response that you can send, explaining the outcome of the complaint in the light of Dispusolve's investigation. If you wish, we can carry out our investigation and arrange for a Solicitor to write to the complainant on your behalf. In this case, you will need to pay us for our work and the Solicitor will invoice you separately.
• I would rather make sure I do not get complaints in the first place - can you help?
  We have spent a great deal of time working on this and have developed strategies for firms to minimise the chance of a complaint being made in the first place and of them being upheld if they are. And if a customer has no reasonable grounds for complaint it follows that they have been treated fairly - so much of your compliance is sorted out at the same time.