Ms MaryRose McGovern:

The 82% of cases that were resolved bears out the facts that we have a very high level of engagement from financial service providers that are seeking to resolve their complaints with their customers. In its current iteration, this is a young office.

We now exist as a merged entity from the office of the Pensions Ombudsman and the Financial Services Ombudsman's Bureau. Mediation was introduced as the default process in 2016. This was very much a leap of faith. It was a transformation of the office, but it was very much supported by the industry. Some of the significantly-sized financial service providers have gone as far as training their own staff in mediation. They are, as it were, able to step away from the rights and wrongs of what has gone amiss and direct their attention to finding a solution. That is what we want to do. Some 46% of complaints were resolved when we were registering them. The ombudsman talked about that in his opening statement, in that perhaps they could have been resolved earlier. They are coming to us. As soon as we put the customer in touch with their financial service provider, there is an opportunity there, which is being availed of, to resolve those complaints so they do not have to go any further.

However, when we take account of those resolutions at the front door, as it were, and the resolutions achieved in the mediation space, in 2022, that accounted for 82% of the complaints we resolved. We are really very pleased with the very positive engagement we have had from financial service providers