FSA plans super-complaints scheme

The Financial Services Authority (FSA), the new, all-embracing City regulator, yesterday announced plans for a single super-complaints system for aggrieved investors, replacing eight different schemes now in place.

The single complaints system will be coupled with a one-stop compensation scheme, supplanting separate redress systems now operated by banks, building societies, insurance companies, investment firms and financial advisers.

Howard Davies, chairman of the FSA, said that he was looking forward to responses to the FSA's proposals before 18 February from both consumers and the financial industry. No date is being given for the formation of both new organisations.

The FSA's plans would involve scrapping various schemes, some of them purely voluntary. They would be subsumed into a single Financial Services Ombudsman who would have the power to investigate firms and force them to respond to a complaint.