Mr. Ger Deering:

I will take Deputy Mitchell's last question first. There is a different level of engagement by different financial service providers. Some may take longer than others to come on board. If financial service providers do not come on board with the system, at the end of the day it is important to remember that we have the power of adjudication and we will make the decision. The vast majority of them have come on board reasonably well. If banks do not engage and do not come to an agreement with the complainant, ultimately we can make a finding and decide. The consumer will get an outcome from the process one way or the other.

The benefit of mediation, particularly for complainants, is the speed at which they can get it. Something like 46% of complaints were dealt with through mediation within two months and 56% were dealt with within three months. The other extreme of that is adjudication, as I mentioned. The mediation process will probably have been gone through, followed by adjudication, which will probably take four to six months, depending on how complex the issue is.

The Deputy asked how many complaints there were. Last year, 44% of complaints were either upheld or partly upheld. That would be the range of complaints that received something. That can be anything from an amount of money where somebody was denied access to a service, up to having their insurance policy reinstated. An issue that we have some concerns about is the extent to which insurance policies are sometimes cancelled, because that has serious implications for the person. We can direct the company to reinstate the insurance policy in that case. In total, last year, 1,800 people got some level of financial of financial outcome or redress through mediation and adjudication through the office.