Ceeney said the CMC sector had managed to gain a foothold “largely because of the mistakes made by financial businesses, and the fact that nobody moved quickly enough to put things right”.
Writing in the FOS’s quarterly report – covering July to September this year – the chief ombudsman said the FOS had not found any evidence of a “compensation culture” in financial services.
She said, if it had found evidence, the Ombudsman would expect to see a change in its ‘uphold’ rates, which refer to the proportion of decisions found in favour of the complainant. But Ceeney said those rates had remained “stable.”
Ceeney said the perception of a compensation culture in financial services had been created by the “ever-present advertising” by CMCs.
But she also noted that, faced with considerable evidence of bad practice, it may have proved tempting for firms to deflect some responsibility onto the consumer.
