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If your complaint is about a bank, an insurance company or a finance firm rather than one of the regulators, you should first complain to the company and then if you remain unhappy to the Financial Ombudsman Service.

British Steel Pension Scheme (BSPS) update – 11 October 2024

By way of an update in relation to the BSPS matter,  we have been thoroughly and independently examining the FCA’s files in relation to the eight-year period relating to BSPS, and we are also looking into a longer timeframe to understand the FCA’s awareness of issues in the defined benefit transfer market prior to the BSPS matter. We have received a significant amount of additional information from the FCA relating to their decision-making process which we have almost finished reviewing.

The Office of the Complaints Commissioner is taking into consideration all of the information and points raised by the individual complainants as well as the further documents recently received from the FCA and is working to issue its report encompassing all of the relevant information as quickly as possible whilst ensuring a thorough and careful investigation is completed.

If you have registered a BSPS complaint with us and would like to provide us with any further information, please contact info@frccommissioner.org.uk as soon as possible and in any event before 31 October 2024.  We have also contacted all BSPS complainants to see if they would be interested in attending a video conference call with the Commissioner to feed in views on their complaint to the Commissioner directly.

We will be issuing a further update about BSPS on our website on 4 November 2024.

Safe Hands notice – 10 October 2024

The Commissioner received a large number of complaints about the FCA’s handling of Safe Hands Plans Limited (‘Safe Hands’). The Commissioner’s view was that the most efficient and expedient way of addressing the concerns of complainants was to prepare a single ‘master’ preliminary report, which was issued on 9 September 2024 to eligible complainants. Those complainants, their representatives and the FCA were invited to comment on the preliminary report by 30 September 2024.

The Commissioner is considering subsequent comments and/or responses to the preliminary report and will take these into consideration if she thinks it is appropriate to do so, when responding to complainants. In the meantime, the Commissioner has made further enquires with the FCA to ensure it has all the pertinent information before issuing her response. The FCA has advised that it will provide its response as soon as possible.

We have been working extremely hard in our investigation into the FCA’s handling of Safe Hands to ensure we would be able to provide complainants with an answer to their complaint as quickly as possible. We appreciate complainants may have felt frustrated at times and we thank you for your ongoing patience during this time.

Please check this website for further information on the progress of this investigation on 11 November 2024. Complainants who have approached us will be updated separately as part of our review process.