How we deal with your complaint

When you first contact us, we will contact you within three working days. If your email is part of continuing correspondence about a complaint, we will respond as soon as possible, and no later than ten working days from the day we receive your email unless we have already given you another date.

If you have provided us with information which does not require a response, we will review it and place it on file but may not send a response.

We do not respond to or keep emails in which we are copied but not asked to undertake an investigation.

The Commissioner’s investigation will be conducted on paper by reviewing the complaint and all of the documents in the regulator’s complaint file.  Although the Commissioner may request additional information from both the regulator and the complainant, the Commissioner does not hold interviews (unless the complainant requires reasonable adjustments.)

Once the Commissioner has completed their review, they issue a preliminary decision. This allows both the complainant and the FCA to comment on their findings. The Commissioner will consider all comments and proceed to issuing their final report. This report will then be published on our website (unless there are exceptional circumstances which the Commissioner will consider, but the final decision is ours).

The Complaints Commissioner’s decision focuses on what they consider to be the central issues.

To be clear, the purpose of this decision isn’t to comment on every individual point or question the parties have made, rather it’s to set out the Complaint Commissioner’s findings on the substantive issue of the complaint and reasons for reaching them, in deciding what’s fair and reasonable in the circumstances.  Please note that in some cases, there may be confidentiality restriction on disclosure of these findings and reasons.