In view of a member query, I have had the following clarification on this from the FOS earlier today. They have also provided a link. As I said in my original e-mail below this is good news and this is confirmed by the fact FOS say this has already prevented tens of thousands of cases from becoming chargeable:

 

“Re your member’s query – yes, it’s right to say that for cases we received from professional representatives between 7 Feb and 31 March, firms will have until the end of April to confirm that those cases are subject to the FCA ‘pause’ and are thus out of our jurisdiction, and where they do so we won’t charge for those cases.  If we don’t receive conformation that the case is out of jurisdiction by that point, the case will be worked in the usual way and will become chargeable.

 

The period for the transitional arrangements to apply ran to the end of March because the arrangements are intended to address the high number of cases affected by ongoing regulatory issues, including but not limited to motor finance commission cases, that representatives sought to bring to our Service in the period before we began charging them to do so on 1 April.  These weren’t ‘new’ complaints – they were largely complaints that the firms in question had had for several months but had not confirmed that they were out of jurisdiction.  In effect we have given the firms extra time to do so before the cases become chargeable so that we can avoid taking on cases that don’t need to come to us, and firms can avoid paying unnecessary charges.  In the last few weeks, we’ve worked closely with firms, professional representatives and the FCA to prevent tens of thousands of cases like this coming to us unnecessarily.  We expect the number of motor finance commission cases coming to us from professional representatives to be very significantly reduced now that charging has been implemented.”

 

More details are on our website at https://www.financial-ombudsman.org.uk/businesses/resolving-complaint/case-fees in case helpful.

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