Mr. William Prasifka:

Yes, it will be a separate block to show what they are doing.

In response to the question as to why we did not uphold more complaints, we have a statutory duty to consider matters impartially and independently; therefore, we can never say we will uphold more or fewer complaints this year than last year. We must have the same methodology. There are a couple of reasons we do not uphold more complaints, one of which is that many complaints are driven by people in financial distress; they simply do not have the money and this may be their last throw of the dice and their only means of dealing with the issue. We hope that as the economy begins to improve and more people are working, there will be fewer people in financial distress. That would help to reduce complaint levels. The second reason is that it is quite obvious to us that there are many people who do not fully understand the products they have bought, how they work or what their rights are; therefore, they make a complaint to us and we consider it independently. We have a very experienced and well trained staff who are engaged in continuous education, many of whom have many years of experience in the area and are familiar with the various products on offer and policies in place and can give people an independent view of their rights. I have always believed it is a very important service that we provide, to give people at least the reassurance that someone with experience and expertise has considered their issues.

I have been in this job almost five years and my experience is that we get very few frivolous complaints. Many people do not understand the products they have and we provide the service of explaining such products and clearly explaining rights. From the thousands of complaints I have dealt with, I can count the frivolous ones on one hand.