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13 february 2023, 10:36
The Financial Ombudsman Service (FOS) has summarized the results of the implementation and development of the “Friendly” Project in 2022. It was launched on July 1, 2021 and is a comprehensive service for additional communication with consumers of financial services, which allows reducing the number of refusals to accept appeals due to violations of the requirements for their registration.
According to Olga Kraynova, the head of the Ombudsman for financial services consumers support Service (OFSC), employees of the Service made calls within 13,000 appeals in 2022 in all areas of the “Friendly” Project. At the same time the share of appeals accepted for review by the Financial Ombudsman as a result of communications was 56%. And in 50% of cases, applicants provided additional information and documents at the stage of consideration of their appeals by the Financial Ombudsman.
“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 send additional documents missing for acceptance of the appeal for review through the personal account within one working day. Subsequently, communication with applicants began to be carried out not only at the stage of receipt of the appeal to the Financial Ombudsman, but also at the stage of Financial Ombudsman decision-making on the merits of the dispute,” Olga Kraynova explained. In addition, documents received from the applicant at the stage of making a decision on the appeal allow the Financial Ombudsman to consider all the claims of the applicant more fully and often avoid a decision to terminate the review.
The FOS has also begun to make calls to applicants who have been rejected by the Financial Ombudsman due to, for example, failure to comply with the claim procedure. Communications on such appeals are made in order to explain to applicants the reasons for refusal, to tell them about the need to comply with the complaints procedure as well as to prevent further mistakes of applicants when submitting an appeal to the Financial Ombudsman, explained the head of the OFSC.
Starting from the second half of 2022, the process of texting a message to the applicant with the purpose of the call and contact details of the employee of the Service for feedback in case the applicant does not answer the calls of the authorized employees of the Service has been launched in the test mode. This option allowed 57% of applicants to be contacted additionally. Or another example – reminder calls – in case the applicant has not submitted documents by the specified time.
The Financial Ombudsman Service, taking an active position in the direction of raising public awareness of this institution, throughout 2022 held an online reception of citizens in video communication mode and gave explanations on how to submit an appeal, explained the reasons for refusal to accept an appeal for consideration, answered questions on appeals under consideration and on appeals that have been decided on. And the Financial Ombudsman’s Diary page, which is maintained by Chief Financial Ombudsman Yury Voronin on the Service website, helps to prevent applicants from making typical mistakes when interacting with financial institutions and when submitting an appeal to the Financial Ombudsman.
