Who we can help

We help thousands of people settle disputes with financial businesses every year.

Before we can investigate a complaint, we need to check it's one we're allowed to help with. Official rules set out the full detail of who we can and can't help, but here is an outline of who we can look at complaints from.

Individual customers

• Individual or joint customers of a financial business that provides services or products in the UK. Customers can ask someone else to help bring a complaint to us, such as family member, a friend, Citizen Advice, local MP, solicitors or a claims company. 
• People who act as personal guarantors for loans to businesses they’re involved in.
• Parents, guardians and others who are bringing a complaint on behalf of someone who is under 18 years old. If you're bringing a complaint on behalf of a minor, we'll ask for evidence that you have parental responsibility for the complainant.
• People bringing a complaint on behalf of someone who’s died or lost mental capacity. We'll need to be sure you're authorised by UK law to bring the complaint and may ask for evidence that you have permission to act on the complainant's behalf.

Small businesses, charities and trusts

• A ‘micro-enterprise’ (a type of small business) with an annual turnover or balance sheet that does not exceed €2 million and fewer than ten employees
• A small or medium-sized enterprise (SME) with an annual turnover of no more than £6.5 million and fewer than 50 employees
• A charity with an annual income of less than £6.5 million
• A trust that has a net asset value of less than £5 million

Visit our dedicated website for small business to find out more about the types of small business we can help.

Cross-border complaints

Generally, we can help people with complaints about businesses that provide retail financial products and services in or from the UK. It doesn’t matter what your nationality is or where you live.

For complaints about businesses based outside the UK, you may be able to get help from an equivalent complaints-handling body.

You can find details on our page about other complaints handling organisations.

Complaints about Claims Management Companies

We can also help people who have a complaint about claims management companies (CMCs). 

Read more about the rules that apply to these complaints.

Generally, we can help  with complaints about most kinds of financial products and services for example, banking and payments, loans, mortgages and pensions.

But there may be reasons why we can’t help with a complaint. For example, we won’t usually look into a problem that’s been decided by a court, or one that we’ve looked at already. Sometimes we can’t help because your complaint should be dealt with by a different organisation or service, and if that's the case we'll try to help you find the right place or organisation to contact.

Read more about complaints we can't help with.

Check if you can make a complaint

You can find out if we can help with your complaint by answering a few questions in our online complaint checker. 

Or you can read about the types of complaint we can help with and our approach to resolving them in the consumer section of our website.