Chief ombudsman Caroline Wayman highlights financial challenges for people during pandemic

It was not long after the coronavirus first hit that consumers began sending pleas for help to the Financial Ombudsman Service (FOS), concerned at the way the finance industry was reacting to Covid-19.

“It was inquiries rather than full-blown complaints at first,” says the chief ombudsman, Caroline Wayman. “We were seeing things that we just wouldn’t have thought about, linked to not being able to do things in a physical world.”

Customers who came to the end of car finance agreements were finding there was no one to come to inspect the car, so they could not give it back. People who needed to use bank branches were struggling to be served. “We saw quite a lot of issues as the practicalities were being worked through,” she says.

The FOS is the official body charged with dealing with consumers’ complaints about financial firms and it can order them to reverse decisions if they are found to be in breach of their own rules or other codes.

Source: The Guardian
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