Ms MaryRose McGovern:

I am pleased to have the opportunity, together with my colleague, Ms Áine Carroll, director of corporate and communication services, to engage with the committee today in relation to the work of the Office of the Financial Services and Pensions Ombudsman. The office was established on 1 January 2018, by the Financial Services and Pensions Ombudsman Act 2017. It is the FSPO's mission to provide an impartial, accessible and responsive complaint resolution service that delivers fair, transparent and timely outcomes for all our customers and enhances the financial services and pensions environment. When any consumer, whether an individual, a small business or an organisation, is unable to resolve a complaint or dispute with a financial service provider or a pension provider, they can refer their complaint to us. We deal with complaints informally at first, by listening to both parties and engaging with them to facilitate a resolution that is acceptable to both parties. Where these early interventions do not resolve the dispute, we formally investigate the complaint and issue a decision. That decision is legally binding on both parties, subject only to a statutory appeal to the High Court.

The Oireachtas has given the FSPO an important statutory role, namely, to provide consumers, including small businesses, with an avenue of redress. The need for the FSPO's services can arise in challenging and difficult circumstances where consumers' complaints against financial service providers or pension providers remain unresolved. Against this background, the FSPO strives to provide the best possible services to all our customers and to effectively and efficiently manage every complaint we receive. In our first years in operation, since 1 January 2018, the FSPO has received more than 21,000 complaints. There continues to be a strong demand for the services of our office and in 2021, we received more than 4,600 complaints and closed more than 5,000 complaints. During both 2020 and 2021, we have succeeded in closing more complaints than we received. This enables us to continue to reduce the number of complaints on hand, to conclude complaints more quickly and to respond to the changing needs and expectations of all our customers.

As set out in the Financial Services and Pensions Ombudsman Annual Report 2020, this office reported a significant improvement in the number of complaints addressed and the quality of the service we provided in the year. During 2020, we closed the highest number of complaints since the office was established, against the background of the global pandemic and the move to remote working by our staff, in accordance with Government guidelines.

I have provided some statistics from the 2020 annual report that I will be happy to discuss with the committee. In March 2020, we began to receive the first complaints arising from the circumstances surrounding the Covid-19 pandemic and by the end of 2020 we had received 600 complaints where the complainant identified Covid-19 as an element of the complaint. Due to the measures that we put in place to ensure the efficient management of these new complaints and to prioritise the progression of complaints concerning business interruption insurance, by the end of the year, 305 of the 600 complaints received, had been concluded. Our business continuity plan ensured that we exceeded the targets we set for 2020, while ensuring the safety of our staff, customers and suppliers.

Earlier this week, I published the overview of complaints for 2021 in accordance with our governing legislation. This publication details the 4,658 complaints we received in 2021 and the outcomes we delivered that year, including the conclusion of 5,010 complaints. During 2021, the total sum of compensation or settlements that complainants benefitted from, through the various stages of our services in mediation, formal investigation and on-the-record offers made by providers, amounted to more than €7 million. This does not include the very significant but unquantifiable benefits, in terms of redress by rectification, secured by complainants. I have given the committee some statistics from the overview of complaints, which I will be happy to discuss with the committee.

The overview of complaints contains numerous case studies of complaints concluded in 2021 across our service. These case studies highlight a noticeable increase in the number of complaints made to the FSPO in the area of investment fraud and cryptocurrency where the financial and personal impact of these fraud incidents remains very significant. Again, I have given some examples that I would be happy to discuss.

Global advances in technology over the past ten years have left many consumers at a disadvantage when accessing digital financial products with which they may be unfamiliar. The complaints we have received highlight, in stark terms, the need to be mindful of the risks posed by investing in unregulated activities, such as apparent cryptocurrency trading, which very often carries a higher risk and level of volatility, than regulated product offerings. The widespread availability of financial services online creates opportunities for consumers to gain access to a wide variety of financial products. However, this also carries significant risks.

When a consumer purchases an unregulated product, he or she may not have the benefits afforded by the consumer protection framework and may not be able to make a complaint to our office about it.

It is notable that the Central Bank of Ireland issued, earlier this month, a warning on investing in cryptocurrency. It is clear, from the complaints we receive and concerns at a regulatory level, that every opportunity should be taken to highlight the risks for consumers so that they can make informed decisions.

Our Overview of Complaints 2021 provides information on the reasons for complaints brought to our office. Almost a quarter of the complaints made to the office in 2021, or 23%, were about poor customer service from financial service providers. Many customers experience frustration over the level of customer service offered by their provider. It seems a more responsive approach from providers could resolve such complaints more quickly or, indeed, prevent many of these from arising.

In this regard, one of our strategic priorities — sharing and influencing — recognises that the insights and data that the FSPO shares can positively influence how financial service providers interact with their customers, including in dealing with complaints, and can promote the more-adequate resourcing of complaint-handling.

Our current strategic plan, launched by the Minister for Finance, Deputy Donohoe, last year and entitled Connecting and Innovating, includes our strategic priority of evolving and innovating, which entails renewing our commitment to continuing to adapt and evolve our service to both anticipate and respond to the changing needs and expectations of all our customers. In delivering on this priority, we will shortly publish a new customer charter and customer action plan, which have been developed through a consultative process with our internal and external customers.

I recognise that the customer experience of our own service users is a continuation of a consumer’s journey in seeking to resolve his or her financial service or pension complaint and that the provision of good customer service is not something that we can hold financial service providers and pension providers alone accountable for.

This office continues to work to place the consumer at the heart of its processes and to contribute to making his or her complaint journey a fair, efficient and effective one, regardless of the eventual outcome. To this end, our new customer charter and customer action plan will strengthen our existing commitments by going further than ever before to enhance our service quality, accessibility and choice, along with broadening our information-sharing and stakeholder-engagement activities.

The customer charter introduces further commitments in areas such as service evaluation and sustainability, which will increase our transparency, demonstrate our accountability and underpin our commitment as an environmentally conscious public sector body. Most especially, the customer action plan will ardently reflect our commitment, under our strategic plan, to equality and human rights as well as our public sector duty. It will espouse our values of fairness and integrity by positively influencing access to our services for all our customers equally, promoting fairness and welcoming diversity.

The Oireachtas has granted this office the power to publish anonymised legally binding decisions regarding complaints against financial service providers. To date, more than 1,500 such decisions have been published and are available online through our website. In addition, our governing legislation allows for the publication of case studies of pension complaints. I believe the publication of FSPO decisions and case studies greatly helps to broaden the awareness of the role of the office and promotes a greater understanding of how we deal with complaints against financial service providers and pension providers.

To date, we have published seven digests of decisions, which include short summaries or case studies of a selection of legally binding decisions. These digests enable us to highlight particular categories of complaints. Our must recently published one, our digest of travel insurance complaintspublished in February 2022, highlighted important factors for consumers to consider if buying travel insurance and identified examples of where complaints were upheld because of a failure by the insurer.

In 2021, we published a digest of decisions relating to complaints from businesses. Included are summaries of 12 decisions relating to declined business-interruption insurance claims arising from the Covid-19 pandemic. In 2021, we continued to receive complaints where the complainant introduced Covid-19 as an element of their complaint. In addition to 600 complaints received in 2020, a further 275 new complaints of this nature were received in 2021, and we continued to prioritise complaints concerning business-interruption insurance in recognition of the importance to policyholders of achieving a swift understanding as to whether they were entitled to policy benefit payments.

In addition to publicly sharing our decisions, case studies and publications, the Act facilitates the sharing of information by the FSPO with the regulatory authorities — the Central Bank of Ireland, the Competition and Consumer Protection Commission, and the Pensions Authority — in a way that contributes to promoting the best interests of consumers and actual or potential beneficiaries of financial or pension services and to the efficient and effective handling of complaints.

Sharing information is a crucial part of ensuring the effective operation of the consumer protection framework, alerting regulatory authorities to potentially systemic issues that may warrant further consideration by those authorities. Our relationships with the regulatory authorities are marked by close co-operation and positive interaction, recognising our individual roles in the consumer protection framework.

In 2021, in addition to the two legally binding decisions we referred to the Pensions Authority and the 13 legally binding decisions referred by our office to the Central Bank of Ireland, we shared a copy of every legally binding decision issued concerning a complaint about a tracker mortgage interest rate with the Central Bank of Ireland. The same approach was adopted for legally binding decisions issued in complaints concerning declined insurance claims for business interruption losses.

In addition to sharing our data and insights with the regulatory authorities, providers and their representative bodies, the FSPO recognises the value of its information to consumers. Our strategic plan establishes connecting and engaging as a strategic priority for us in the coming period.

Since 2021, we have worked to enhance our website, focusing on providing information on our services in an accessible way. This has included the creation and promotion of a series of online animated videos designed to communicate with our customers and prospective customers on how our processes work. These videos use clear language and subtitles to ensure accessibility for all our customers.

In delivering against this strategic priority, the FSPO has begun to utilise social media as a communications tool in addition to more traditional communications channels. We are growing our audience online so that those who may have less familiarity with our services can find us when they need us and learn more about our role.

Interestingly, 74% of complaints to the FSPO in 2021 were received online, by comparison with 50% in 2019. There is no doubt that the pandemic has further accelerated the transition to digital engagement for many. However, we are very conscious of the risk of digital exclusion. In that regard, we are developing our communications strategy, which will include actions to engage across the country, including with groups of consumers who may have lower levels of awareness of our services, and working with stakeholders to do so.

I thank the committee for the opportunity to engage with it today. Our office plays a key role in Ireland’s consumer protection framework. We perform our statutory role guided by our values of fairness, integrity, independence, accessibility and effectiveness. We are committed to delivering for our customers and continuing to improve the quality of our service. For the FSPO, as for all organisations, the impact of Covid-19 has continued to feature over the past two years. I pay tribute to our staff, whose dedication to our work and customers continues in spite of the personal challenges posed over that period. We will be very happy to answer any questions members may have.