FOS answers your financial frights

What really confuses you about your finances? Whether it’s odd charges or disputed transactions, money can be a bit of a maze these days. But before you give up and start to hide all of your money under your mattress, there is another way.

If you have a complaint with a financial provider and you need help, you can escalate it to the Financial Ombudsman Service (FOS). They act as a free way to help resolve your problems with providers without having to take them to court. So here are some of the questions and answers to come out of our joint Q&A.

FOS answers your questions

Izzy had a question about bank fraud:

@financialombuds my daughter has been a victim of fraud, all her money taken from acct. Natwest refusing to help . Advice please. Thanks

— Izzy Wildheart (@Izzy84417765) May 12, 2014

Here’s what FOS had to say to help:

‘Thanks @Izzy84417765, sorry to hear your daughter had money taken from her acc. With fraud, we’d expect the bank to investigate what happened. If you’re having trouble getting the bank to take this seriously, we may be able to help. Give us a call on 0300 123 9 123. @WhichUK also has a handy guide to getting a problem like this sorted out #moneytalk.’

Which? Convo’s community gets involved…

Tony Boorman, chief executive of the Financial Ombudsman, asked you for your questions here and you didn’t disappoint. John asked about the Ombudsman’s max limit for compensation. Here’s FOS’ answer:

‘The majority of cases we handle involve amounts much smaller than the maximum limit we can award – and this means they are not affected by the limit on how much compensation we can tell a business to pay.

‘However, as you may know, we can tell the financial business to pay compensation of up to the maximum limit – £150,000, but we cannot tell it to pay any further amount in excess of this. We can only ask if it would be willing to do this – sometimes it will and sometimes it won’t.

‘If not, the other option is to take the business to court instead and it can award unlimited compensation. Here’s a link to our website with some info on the subject which I think may help.’

Sue asked, ‘does the Financial Ombudsman regulate loan companies?’. FOS replied:

Sue asks if we “regulate” loan companies? No, the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) is the regulator. But we CAN look at these complaints.

— Financial Ombudsman (@financialombuds) May 13, 2014

Did we answer your question? Is there anything else you’d like to know about your financial rights?