Nicola Wadham, Chief Information Officer, outlines the digital and technology changes taking place at the Financial Ombudsman Service and why it’s an exciting time to be leading the work on our IT strategy and systems.
An exciting year ahead
2022 will be an interesting and challenging year of digital change at the Financial Ombudsman Service.
When I joined the organisation two years ago, I wanted to create and implement, with my colleagues, a strategy that increased the role of technology in delivering our service. This year, my colleagues and I will be working to make this happen. By continuing to invest in new and existing technological capabilities, we’ll bring the strategy to life.
Our work’s already begun. We recently improved our human resources and finance processes by investing in a new system, Workday, which went live at the end of last year. Next, we’ll be updating our telephony to a cloud-based system. After that, we’ll be looking to enhance our case management systems, explore intelligent automation tools and set up a digital portal for our customers.
Enhancing our technology and digital capabilities formed a key part of our recently published Action Plan. The plan set out how we’ll change and improve the organisation to ensure we deliver the best service to the hundreds of thousands of customers who come to us each year for help to resolve their financial disputes.
Digital as an enabler
Digital is a central enabler of our plan to change and improve and it provides an opportunity to be part of something that will directly benefit our customers. Enhancing our technology and digital capabilities will help us to resolve complaints more swiftly and share our information and insight more efficiently to help prevent complaints and detriment arising.
Throughout my career, I’ve been directly involved in projects that use new technology to bring benefits to organisations as well as to the people that work in or rely on them. One of the things I enjoy most is working in close partnership with colleagues across the Financial Ombudsman to research, design, and build systems that will help us all to work more collaboratively and productively.
Join our digital transformation
We’re looking to enhance our existing team. If you’re looking to advance your career in technology, data and digital, and you have the expertise and enthusiasm to improve user experience for our customers and colleagues, we'd like to hear from you - we are looking for people from a variety of backgrounds to join us and help deliver our strategy.
You’d be part of a diverse team, tasked with understanding the needs of our customers, our colleagues, and the changing landscape of financial services and complaint handling.
Some of the major digital projects we'll be focusing on in 2022 include:
- A new digital portal to make it easier and more efficient for our customers to interact with us by uploading documents and tracking the progress of their complaints
- Optimising case management to help our staff work more smoothly and productively with strong process expertise
- Exploring intelligent automation (IA) opportunities to further explore as part of our existing digital strategy ways to convert digitally submitted complaints efficiently into case files.
Apply now
If joining our digital transformation interests you, you can follow us on LinkedIn to see our latest vacancies as they’re advertised.
Or view the current vacancies, and find out more about life at the Financial Ombudsman, on our website.