Natalie Ceeney, chief executive and chief ombudsman of the Financial Ombudsman Service (FOS) has been highly criticised for being a “librarian” and lacking financial services expertise.
Ms Ceeney has had a “varied career” but claimed the driving force throughout her career was that she has worked in organisations that deliver customer service and “making things work pretty well and better”. She has worked in the NHS, the British Library, the National Archive and 18 months ago, started at FOS.
PPI
Ms Ceeney admits that she gets frustrated with attitudes in the industries that do not put customers first. She said: “An awful lot of people really do care about their customers and they treat complaints with insight. They really want to learn and really want to engage. “I also talk to people where I get the distinct impression that customer service is way down the list and complaints are seen as an overhead. It is extremely worrying. The bad is really disappointing and really depressing.”
Ms Ceeney highlighted the Payment Protection Insurance (PPI) debacle fell into this category.
She said: “Putting it in context, we have been dealing with PPI cases for five years before the court cases and that is in high volume – over a quarter of a million – and yet the major banks still fought a high court case when frankly, to just about everyone, the answer was blindingly obvious.
“It is behaviour like that that does not do the sector any good, does not do our reputation any good and it is bad for business.” Ms Ceeney emphasised the industry does “an awful lot right which doesn’t get shouted about” but “a very small number of firms can do a lot of damage to the industry’s reputation”.
She said: “One of the main issues as to why it (PPI scandal) went on for so long is that the banks had sold so many PPI policies over so many years that the money at stake was huge.
“The regulator has quite openly said now, with hindsight, they should have intervened earlier and I think we would all agree on that. The problem therefore became the volume of issues – the scale of the detriment grew, grew and grew to the point where the money at stake was so huge.”
The amount of redress that has been set aside for PPI from the banks is around £6bn to £9bn and then the “court case figure was around £20bn”
Sally Bowyer, Managing Director of Brunel Franklin, said: “We are pleased to have been able to help thousands of clients and get the maximum PPI refund they are entitled to; many PPI cases we see illustrate just how careful you need to be when taking out loans and credit agreements, particularly over the phone. It is easy to rush things over the phone and all too easy for the vendor not to make clear the all important detail of the policy. It really does pay to check the small print.”
Learn more about PPI refunds and find out if you could apply for a refund today! Visit the website www.brunelfranklin.com or call Brunel Franklin, free, on 0800 051 54 51