Michael Noonan (Limerick City, Fine Gael)

On 5 January 2012 the Financial Services Ombudsman wrote to my Department. He referred to several of the submissions in which concern was expressed about how information on the complaints record of financial service providers might be presented. Assurances were sought that the information would be presented in a manner that was verifiable, robust, properly contextualised and not misleading. In addition, some submissions expressed a reservation about identifying individual financial service providers in case summaries.

In the Financial Services Ombudsman's biannual reviews, information on findings is given in two forms. First, information is aggregated into three general categories: investment, banking and insurance. Second, within each general category the information is broken down by product type. All information is aggregated across all providers so that no individual provider is identified. The information provided under each category is similar, that is, total number of complaints, complaints upheld, complaints upheld in part, complaints not upheld and total amount of compensation awarded. The annual report provides case summaries on an anonymous basis and details from the findings are redacted so that neither the complainant nor the provider can be identified.

The Financial Services Ombudsman is now proposing that the biannual review could provide a further breakdown of the information provided by the financial service provider. Accordingly, for each financial service provider information would be provided on the total number of complaints, the number of complaints upheld, the number of complaints upheld in part, the number of complaints not upheld and the total amount of compensation awarded. To give an accurate picture of the complaints record of each financial service provider, information about the relative market share of the provider would also be provided. Wherever possible, this would be done using information already in the public domain especially as referenced in other frequent regulatory reporting. For example, for insurance products the relevant metric would be the number of policies in force or the number of people covered by those policies. For banking products the relevant metric might be number of accounts or number of particular products in force. The Financial Services Ombudsman also stated that he would fully engage with the industry to develop the most appropriate manner of presenting market share information for each relevant product and that case summaries identifying the financial service provider should only be presented where there was a compelling public interest to do so and this would be specifically provided for in legislation. He went on to state that such a compelling public interest would include the need to inform potential customers that certain financial products may carry risks that customers would otherwise be unaware of in the absence of such a disclosure.

The Financial Services Ombudsman also suggested that any legislative regime would incorporate several elements. It should set out a requirement to publish information on the complaints record of financial service providers on a regular basis, that is, every six months. It should provide the Financial Services Ombudsman with the flexibility with regard to the format of the presentation of the information. I wish to inform the Deputy that I am currently considering the Financial Services Ombudsman's proposals on the naming issue. Once I have clarified the legal issues involved I will bring the appropriate proposals to Government.

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