Time limits for businesses

A customer usually needs to complain to you or to us within 6 years of the event complained about.

If they haven’t done this, we can’t usually investigate the complaint unless the customer makes their complaint within 3 years of becoming aware (or when they ought reasonably to have become aware) that they had cause to complain:

We also may be able to consider a complaint if they have exceptional circumstances for a delay in complaining.

You have 15 days to consider complaints about:

• payment services – such as bank transfers or direct debits
• electronic money – for example, online money transfers, Apple Pay or travel money cards

For most other complaints, you have 8 weeks to consider a complaint.

For certain complaints relating to car finance, the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) has introduced temporary complaint-handling rules that allow businesses more than 8 weeks to send their final response. You can read more about this on our business page.  

After these time limits have passed, you should send the customer a final response.

What the final response should say 

The final response should mention that the customer has the right to refer their complaint to us in the next six months and enclose a copy of our leaflet and our website address.

The final response also needs to state whether you agree to us looking into the complaint if it’s referred to us after the six-month time limit runs out. If you say you  agree, you can't change your mind later on.

You can check the correct wording to use in your final responses.

After a customer has received your final response, they have 6 months to refer their complaint to us. 

For certain complaints relating to car finance, customers may have up to 15 months from the date of the final response to bring their complaint to us.  

If they complain later than this, we usually won’t be able to help unless:

• the delay is due to exceptional circumstances – for example, they were seriously ill during the time when they should have referred the complaint
• you didn’t send a valid final response
• you consent to waive the 6-month time limit

If you don’t agree to us investigating a late complaint, we’ll look into what's happened and decide if we agree the complaint is out of time. If the customer has exceptional circumstances, we may still investigate the case even if you haven’t given your consent.

How to calculate when the 6-month time limit ends

This 6-month deadline starts from the date the business sends the final response. We then use calendar months to work out the end date.

So if you send a final response on 7 May, the customer has until 7 November  to refer the complaint to us.

If you send a final response on 30 August, then the customer has until 28 February to complain to us – since it’s not possible to have an end date of 30 February. 

We can consider complaints brought to us after the 6-month time limit if the consumer missed the deadline due to exceptional circumstances. We will expect to see evidence that the consumer was affected by circumstances that were exceptional –  and that those circumstances caused the delay. An example might be where the consumer was unable to act because of illness.

Find out more about how we consider exceptional circumstances on our website.

You can make an offer to proactively settle a complaint after we move it to investigation. 

But you must make it within the time limits for it to count as proactively settled: 

• You need to make the offer to settle the complaint within 14 calendar days of us telling you that we’ve moved a complaint from your customer to investigation.  

Read more about the proactive settlement process.

The Financial Conduct Authority has already given guidance to businesses that a consumer not knowing about the deadline will not count as an exceptional circumstance. Customers won’t be able to use this as a reason on its own to explain why they missed the deadline to complain.  But if they can clearly show there were exceptional circumstances for missing the deadline, they may still be able to have their complaint looked into. 

Examples of why customers didn’t complain in time that might be considered exceptional are a period of serious-ill health, or a bereavement at the relevant time in question. 

They may also be able to still submit a complaint to a business if they were sold the PPI policy after 29 August 2017 or if the complaint is about a claim being turned down by an insurer.

In civil actions in the courts, there is usually an overall “long-stop” requirement that the matter complained about should have happened within the last 15-years. This limitation does not apply to complaints to the ombudsman. There is no 15-year “long-stop” rule in the complaint-handling rules made under the legislation that set up the ombudsman service. 

This reflects the fact that financial products are "intangible" and can be of a very long-term nature. Problems – for example, with a mortgage product or a whole-of-life policy – may only emerge or become apparent many years after the contract was taken out.

On the other hand, an important time-limit that applies to consumers bringing complaints to the ombudsman service – but not to legal action in the courts – is the requirement under the complaint-handling rules for a consumer to complain to the Financial Ombudsman within 6 months of the final response letter from the business concerned, as outlined above.