Complaints about discrimination

Discrimination is often described as treating someone differently or unfairly because of the way they are.

The law – under the Equality Act 2010 – protects people in England, Scotland and Wales, from discrimination in the workplace and wider society. In Northern Ireland the law is different but you are still protected and we can still look into your complaint.

If you have a disability, financial businesses must make reasonable adjustments so that you can use their services. And any organisation that provides services to the public must not discriminate against a person because of their:

• age
• disability
• gender reassignment
• pregnancy and maternity
• race
• religion or belief
• sex
• sexual orientation.

These are known as ‘protected characteristics’.

Regulations – including the Consumer Duty – require financial firms to:

• support you while you’re using their product or service
• be flexible and find ways to support vulnerable customers.

People come to us when they're unhappy about the way they were treated because of who they are. For example, they might:

• have asked a financial business to change the way they communicated with them because of a medical condition, but the firm didn't
• find their car insurance went up because of their age
• believe a bank singled them out and treated them differently because of their race
• feel a financial firm doesn't understand how their disability affects them and is refusing to provide services, or is treating them as a nuisance
• have been told they must have a mobile phone to use certain services and products 
• have to choose a title like 'Mr' or 'Mrs' or a gender they don’t identify with
• believe a financial firm declined their application for a product or service because they live with a mental health condition.

We understand that it can be difficult to talk about discrimination.

We also recognise you may have experienced this kind of thing before and that discrimination can have a huge – and long-lasting – emotional impact.

So we’ll do our best to handle your complaint sensitively. We will listen to you and take the time to understand things from your point of view.

Our service is free and easy to use. 

1. Before bringing your complaint to us, you should make a formal complaint to the company involved.
2. If they don't send you a final response letter within eight weeks – or you're unhappy with their response – you can complain to us.
3. Check that we can help you by using the link below. Our online form will ask you more about some of the things we need to know upfront and help you make sure you’re ready to send us your complaint.
4. Fill in our online complaint form or phone us to log a complaint – or ask someone to do so on your behalf. Your case will be assigned to a case handler who will get in touch when they start to investigate.
5. To help us consider a complaint fairly, we’ll ask you to provide more information. However, we understand that some things are difficult to talk about and you may prefer to ask someone to talk to us on your behalf. For example, this could be a friend, a family member or a support worker.

If you feel your complaint needs to be dealt with urgently because you’re facing financial hardship or severe ill health, let us know. Once your complaint is with an investigator, they’ll talk to you in more detail about timing and next steps.

Read more about how long it takes once you’ve sent us your complaint

We won’t ask for more information than we need to investigate your complaint. But in most discrimination cases, we’ll ask about:

• who was involved, and
• when things happened.

We’ll want to understand:

• why you think the business has discriminated against you
• how that affected you and made you feel, and
• what you’d like the business to do to put things right.

We’ll also talk to the business to find out:

• what the business knew about your circumstances
• what, if any, support it gave you or could have put in place, and
• any other relevant information.

When investigating your complaint, we may find we can settle things through mediation. That is, by talking to both sides to find a solution that’s acceptable to you and the business – and that allows you to move on. 

But if we can’t settle the complaint through mediation, we'll investigate what happened using evidence from you, the financial business and any relevant third parties. We’ll consider any relevant laws, regulations or industry codes of conduct that applied at the time, including the Equality Act 2010. 

Whether the Equality Act is relevant to your complaint or not, financial businesses have a duty to treat all their customers fairly. And the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) says financial businesses must take particular care to treat vulnerable customers fairly. So we'll also take into account whether you were vulnerable, for example because you:

• had a health condition or illness
• were going through a difficult life event, such as bereavement or relationship breakdown
• were particularly vulnerable to financial or emotional shocks
• were struggling to understand finance and financial issues

Once we've investigated, we'll tell you whether we believe you've been treated unfairly or not, and we'll explain how we reached our decision. In some cases, a business might have followed a standard process, but we may believe that the process wasn’t appropriate or fair under the circumstances.

If we find that a business didn’t do everything it was meant to – and didn’t treat you fairly – we have the power to put things right. We can't say that the business has broken the law by breaching the Equality Act 2010. Only a court can do that. 

But we can tell the business to put things right.

For example, we might tell it to do things differently for you in the future, such as changing the way it communicates with you or reviewing a decision.

The emotional impact of discrimination can be significant and long-lasting. So we may also tell the business to apologise and acknowledge that the way they’ve treated you was upsetting. This could include telling them to pay you compensation for any distress or inconvenience you have experienced.

What to expect

If you’ve experienced discrimination, see the Citizens Advice website for guidance.

We’re committed to ensuring our service is accessible for customers, and you can read our reasonable adjustments policy to find out more about that.