Shake up of employment laws needed

It has recently been claimed that some employers in the UK are abusing employment legislation by ignoring regulations in order to get rid of employees without going through the property procedures. Read more

Tags: employments laws, MPs, employment legislation, Germany, jobs, redundancy, credit crunch

Increase in PPI complaints results in further investigation

According to a recent report a huge rise in the level of complaints being received in relation to PPI, or payment protection insurance, has resulted in calls for further investigation into the sale of this type of insurance cover. This cover is commonly sold alongside credit such as loans and credit cards, and the purpose of the cover is to meet repayments on the debt for a set period of time if the policyholder cannot work due to sickness, injury, or redundancy. Read more

Tags: financial industry, investigation, redundancy, work, industry group, fsa, financial ombudsman, payment protection insurance

Job cuts at the FOS

In a recent report the Financial Ombudsman Service has announced that around a quarter of its workforce will be losing their jobs, as resources are streamlined to fit in with workloads.

Although the Financial Ombudsman Service has been receiving many complaints about bank charges it had been dealing with a high level of complaints relating to mis-sold endowment policies. The number of complaints relating to this issue reach its peak in 2005 but then began to taper off.

It is thought that the workload of the Financial Ombudsman Service will fall significantly in 2005, particularly if banks continue to reduce their overdraft charges, as many have stated they will be doing. Nearly a million complaints relating to endowment policies have been dealt with by the service of the past few years, with around seventy thousand complaints coming in for 2005. However, although more complaints were expected the issue seems to be cooling down.

One FOS spokesperson stated that staff number were being cut in order to align them with demand and workloads, and that it was hoped many of the job cuts would result from voluntary redundancy. The Financial Ombudsman Service is the main point of contact for complaints relating to financial institutions and services. The aim of the Financial Ombudsman Service is to try and resolve disputes between consumers and financial service providers, and award compensation in cases where this is deemed appropriate.

Bosses at the Financial Ombudsman Service will soon be starting consultations with the staff council in order to finalize the details of the job cuts.

Complaints relating to mis-sold endowments have dropped to under thirty thousand for this year, with one official from the FOS stating: “We are not processing the hundreds of thousands of endowment mortgage disputes since 2005.”

Tom Smith
24th October 2007

Tags: mortgage, jobs, financial, endowments, vuts, ombudsman