Credit and general insurance accounted for majority of the Financial Ombudsman Service’s accepted dispute cases over the past year despite the controversies surrounding financial planning.
In fact, the industry umpire’s 2014/15 annual review found the number of financial difficulty disputes declined by 12 per cent over the last 12 months, from 4,705 disputes last year to 4,134 disputes in 2014/15.
It had declined by 37 per cent from 6,626 disputes in 2011-2012.
FOS chief ombudsman, Shane Tregillis, said this could be attributed to enhancements in the way financial services providers were managing disputes when people were in financial difficulty, and the low interest rates during the reporting period, which lessened the repayment burden for many borrowers.
In the last 12 months, FOS received 31,895 disputes related to financial services providers – an increase of one per cent on 2014 – and accepted 23,344, a decline of 0.5 per cent on the previous year.
Credit disputes, on the other hand, were the source of majority of the disputes, accounting for 49 per cent of all cases, while general insurance accounted for 26 per cent of all accepted disputes.
FOS also referred 173 possible systemic issues to financial services providers, out of which 52 definite systemic issues were resolved.
The number of investment disputes jumped by 13 per cent to 1,332 cases, and mainly related to managed investments and superannuation.
The number of issues, which could affect people outside the parties to a dispute, was up from 162 last year.
