Our aim is to provide you at all times, with a high-quality standard of service. However, there may be occasions when you feel that this objective has not been achieved. If you are unhappy with our service or think there is a problem, please let us know immediately.
We will resolve complaints as quickly as we can. Some complaints require detailed investigation and/or a dialogue with third parties and may take some time to resolve.
We will provide fair redress where we believe it is appropriate. For this purpose, fair means proportionate to the circumstances, consistent with the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) Rules and Financial Ombudsman (FOS) Guidelines.
How will we handle your compliant?
We regard any expression of dissatisfaction from or on behalf of any client to be a complaint irrespective of whether it is made orally or in writing or whether it is justified or not.
We will provide a copy of this procedure to any client who makes a complaint or to any client who requests it.
On receipt of a complaint, we will pass the details to our Compliance Officer.
We regard a complaint as: –
- An expression of dissatisfaction from an eligible complainant.
- Relating to a regulated activity.
- A client who has, or may, suffer financial loss, material distress or significant inconvenience.
We have two levels of complaint:
- A complaint where we can resolve it informally within three days of your confirming its nature. Where we resolve such a complaint informally, we will write to you summarising the complaint, the resolution we agreed with you at the time and remind you of your right to refer the complaint to the FOS.
- Where a complaint cannot be resolved informally, we will enter the formal written dispute service, which we aim to resolve as soon as possible and in any event within 8 weeks of notification.
Where we cannot resolve your complaint within three working days:
- We will acknowledge your complaint in writing, enclosing a copy of these procedures;
- If you make an oral complaint, our written acknowledgement will set out our understanding of your complaint;
- If we have reasonable grounds to be satisfied that another firm may be solely or jointly responsible for the allegation(s) made, we will promptly forward the complaint or the relevant part of it to that firm. We will write to you to confirm our actions and provide contact details of the firm concerned;
Our acknowledgement letter will confirm that: –
- We will investigate the complaint and respond fairly and promptly;
- Our Compliance Officer will review the details surrounding the matter complained about and will examine the file and any other relevant information. If the complaint is in respect of business conducted by our Compliance Officer, then another senior employee will investigate.
- We will endeavour to send you our Final Decision Letter addressing your concerns and providing you with our decision within 4 weeks or keep you informed of the progress of your complaint if not resolved before then;
- Where we are unable to provide you with our Final Decision Letter, we will send you confirmation of this in writing along with an explanation as to why we have been unable to complete our investigations within this time scale. We will confirm when you can next expect contact from us;
- We will continue to investigate the complaint until we are in a position to send you our Final Decision Letter;
- Once our investigation is completed, our Compliance Office will write a “Final Response” letter to you with their appraisal of the matter, our final decision and the nature and terms of any settlement, if applicable. If we decide an offer of redress is appropriate, any compensation we offer will be a fair offer taking all the facts into account.
We shall deem the matter closed when;
- Our investigation has been completed and a Final Decision Letter has been sent to you and we have received no response within 8 weeks, or;
- You have indicated, in writing, acceptance of any earlier response, where appropriate.
If you are advised that we have concluded the matter and you are not satisfied with our final response, you may then take the complaint to the Financial Ombudsman Service (FOS). A copy of the Financial Ombudsman Service leaflet ‘your complaint and the ombudsman’ will be included with our Final Decision Letter.
Where we are still unable to complete our investigations within 8 weeks of your complaint, we will send confirmation of this in writing along with an explanation as to why we have been unable to complete our investigations within this time scale. We will confirm when you can next expect contact from us. At this stage, you will be entitled to refer your complaint to the Financial Ombudsman Service who can be contacted as above. We will provide you with a copy of the Financial Ombudsman Service leaflet; ‘Your complaint and the ombudsman’.
The Financial Ombudsman Service
We are covered by the Financial Ombudsman Service (FOS). They offer a completely independent review of your complaint when we have been unable to resolve it between ourselves, so if you’re not happy with our final response, you can ask them to review your complaint for you.
Although you can refer your complaint to the FOS at any time, they’ll ask for our permission to investigate complaints where:
- You haven’t complained to us first, to give us the chance to put things right.
- You have complained to us, but we haven’t given you our Final Response yet and we’re still within our timescales.
You’ll need to contact them within six months of the date of our summary resolution communication or final response letter.
To contact the Financial Ombudsman Service:
- Call free on 0800 023 4567
- Visit the website and fill out the online form
- Write to Exchange Tower, Harbour Exchange, London, E14 9SR
- Email: complaint.info@financial-ombudsman.org.uk
Please be aware that some complaints are not eligible to be referred to the Financial Ombudsman Service (for example – enquiries relating to Buy to Let mortgages) and where this is the case, we will inform you of this when we send you our final response.
Be assured that we treat all complaints very seriously and we will conduct a full review and conclude all matters to the mutual satisfaction of the parties as quickly as possible maintaining appropriate records at all times.
