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07 july 2022, 15:57
The Financial Ombudsman Service (FOS) has summed up the results of the first year of the “Friendly” Project aimed at additional communication with consumers of financial services and making it possible to reduce the number of refusals to accept appeals due to violations of the requirements for their registration.
The project was launched on July 1, 2021.
The essence of the “Friendly” Project at the start was to make a phone call to the consumer at the stage of filing an appeal with an offer to fill in, within one working day, documents missing for acceptance of appeal for consideration through a personal account.
Head of the Ombudsman for financial services consumers support Service (OFSC) Olga Kraynova reported that from the start of the project till 30 June 2022 the employees of the “Friendly” block made 8,680 calls on potentially rejected appeals. In 4,084 cases, as a result of the call and additional documents, the appeal was accepted for consideration by the Financial Ombudsman. Conversion of calls, i.e. the transformation of a potential rejection into acceptance, rose to more than 50% during the year of the project’s operation.
“In the first years of the Service’s existence, we encountered a large number of rejections to consumers in submitting an appeal, as not everyone was able to convert very quickly and understand what set of documents was required and how to fill in the fields in the personal account, despite all the simplicity of submitting an appeal through the personal account. Of course, this could affect the level of satisfaction with the work of the institution of out-of-court dispute resolution, so we decided to launch such a project,” Olga Kraynova elucidated.
She noted that at first, the employees who called consumers faced some difficulties. “Many consumers refused to communicate, so we had to call six or seven times. Some just wouldn’t pick up the phone, some were afraid it might be some kind of fraud. Today, after a year of our hard work, there are no more such problems and we hope that the percentage of rejected applications due to lack of documents will gradually decrease,” the Head of the OFSC said.
The next stage in the development of the “Friendly” Project was the Service’s calls to appeals made through postal services, which increased during the year, and to appeals from assignees. The project also began to make explanatory calls on appeals “with a history”, i.e. appeals that had been repeatedly rejected. The “Friendly” Project continued to develop in terms of communication on appeals under consideration on the merits, the preparation of cases for the Financial Ombudsman’s diary, as well as personal appointments in an online format.
