Financial Ombudsman Complaint Letters
Equisure Direct drafts formal complaint letters for submission to the Financial Ombudsman Service (FOS). We prepare the letter, you submit it directly. We do not manage your complaint on your behalf, act as your representative, or contact the FOS for you.
What we cover
Who this is for
Consumers who have received a final response from a financial firm and want to escalate to the FOS with a well-structured complaint letter. You submit directly, we prepare the document.
Get in touch
Use the chat widget to describe your financial complaint and what has happened so far. We will outline how we can help draft your FOS submission letter.
When the Financial Ombudsman can consider your complaint
The Financial Ombudsman Service handles complaints about banks, lenders, insurers, credit card providers and other regulated financial firms. Before it will look at a case, the firm itself must have had the chance to resolve it. That means either you have received the firm's final response, or eight weeks have passed since you complained.
The six month deadline that catches people out
Once a firm sends you a final response, you normally have six months from the date of that letter to refer the complaint to the Financial Ombudsman. Miss it and the service can decline to look at the case at all, however strong the underlying complaint was.
There is also a longer backstop: generally six years from the event complained about, or three years from when you reasonably became aware of a problem. The six month window after a final response is the one that most often runs out quietly.
What a strong referral contains
The Financial Ombudsman decides what is fair and reasonable in the circumstances, on the documents in front of it. A referral works better when it clearly sets out:
- What you say went wrong, in dates and specifics rather than general terms
- The firm's final response and precisely which parts of it you disagree with
- The impact on you, including any financial loss and any distress or inconvenience
- What you are asking the firm to do to put things right
- Supporting documents, indexed so the case handler can follow them
What we prepare
We draft the complaint letter to the firm, the follow up where the firm does not respond within eight weeks, and the referral to the Financial Ombudsman with your evidence organised and cross referenced.
Equisure Direct prepares documents. We are not a law firm, we are not regulated by the Financial Conduct Authority, and we are not a claims management company. We do not act as your representative and we cannot guarantee an outcome. The Financial Ombudsman is free for consumers to use and you never need to pay anyone to access it, including us. What you are paying for is the quality and completeness of the written case.
Read more: how to escalate a complaint to the Financial Ombudsman.