Since we launched our new strategy in 2020, we have deliberately set ourselves stretching and ambitious targets for the areas that comprise the three pillars of our strategy:
Enhancing our service
Preventing complaints and unfairness arising
Building an organisation with the capabilities it needs for the future
On this page you can read about how we performed in 2022/23, against the challenges we faced and targets we set ourselves.
Highlights
It has been a year of transformation for our service – and we’ve made significant progress in improving the level of customer service that we offer – but we know there’s still more to be done. Some key highlights from the year include:
- reducing the average time customers had to wait for a resolution to their complaint from 8.84 months at the start of the year to 3.39 months at the end of the year
- reducing the number of open cases older than 18 months, from 26,444 at the start of the year to 7,472 at the end of the end of the year
- achieving an overall quality score of 92% for investigations – 7% above our target score
- meeting our target for staff engagement by earning a score of 70%
- completing our most recent five-year carbon management plan with the Carbon Trust, achieving a 59.7% reduction in emissions against a target of 45%
Enhancing our service
Where we met or exceeded our targets
In addition to the highlights shown above, we were able to deliver a budgeted cost per case that was lower than our target for the year. Financial business satisfaction with our service was 78% this year, exceeding our target by 3%.
Where we did not meet our targets
We did not meet the ambitious targets we set around timeliness. However, we significantly reduced the average amount of time customers had to wait for a resolution to their complaint, and the number of open cases that have been with us for more than 18 months.
As a consequence of our focus on resolving our oldest cases, consumer satisfaction scores have decreased over the year – particularly for cases we didn’t uphold. We know that the longer it takes us to resolve a complaint, the less likely a customer is to be satisfied with our service. At the beginning of the new financial year we introduced our new service standards. These standards show our commitment to improving our timeliness – and meeting them will help us to deliver the level of service our customers expect.
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More data
Cost, efficiency and timeliness
How we performed Our aims:
2022/23 Variance from target 2021/22 Deliver the budgeted cost per case of £1,160 £1,068 -£92 £1,041 Median time from conversion to resolution is no more than 4.2 months 4.83 0.63 6.41 No open cases older than 18 months by the end of 2022/23 7,472* 7,472 9,081
Customers and quality How we performed Our aims: 2022/23 Variance from target 2021/22 Consumer satisfaction for non-upheld cases is 30% or above 18% -12% 36% Consumer satisfaction for upheld cases is 80% or above 81% 1% 88% Business satisfaction is 75% or above 78% 3% 80% Quality score target of 85% for case setup 93% 8% 89% Quality score target of 85% for investigations 92% 7% 84% Quality score target of 85% for final decision 98% 13% 99% No more than 0.65% of closures result in an upheld service complaint 0.61% -0.4% 0.64%
Preventing complaints and unfairness arising
We survey businesses each year to seek their feedback on how useful they find our insight and information resources. We conducted our latest survey in March 2023, and 75% of businesses rated the resources as ‘very helpful’ or ‘quite helpful’.
Public awareness of our service has scored highly throughout the year, with almost nine in ten (89%) consumers having some awareness of us when prompted. For 2023/24, we’re working with YouGov to put a more ambitious awareness survey in place – and we expect to see awareness scores decrease to a new, more accurate, baseline. This continues to be an area of focus for us: improving public awareness of the Financial Ombudsman is one of our new service standards.
Our Business Support Hub, formerly our Technical Desk, helps financial businesses settle issues with customers before a formal complaint reaches us. Last year, it received more than 10,000 enquiries from over 1,400 different businesses. In a survey of users, 100% told us we’d given them the guidance that helped them resolve matters with their customer.
We published the Wider Implications Framework Annual Report for 2022 – outlining how we’ve collaborated with the regulatory family to address issues that might impact the financial services industry.
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More data
Prevention
How we performed
Our aims:
2022/23
Variance from target
2021/22
75% of businesses find our overall insight and information resources helpful 75% N/A 75% Prompted awareness of our service is 80% 89% 9% 91%
Building an organisation with the capabilities it needs for the future
Where we met or exceeded our targets
We survey our staff each year, and this year we met our staff engagement target of 70%. This has, though, been a year of great change for our people and our service. In February and March, we proposed significant changes to our enabling teams and casework structure. These proposals are investing in making our service fit for the future – but we know there has been a period of uncertainty for colleagues which may impact engagement next year.
Our voluntary staff attrition level was 17% – which is below our target of 18% – down from 27% at the start of the year.
We exceeded our strategic measure for sickness absence this year. The overall lost time rate over the financial year was 2.5%, which is 0.5% better than our target.
Where we did not meet our targets
Our target for our senior managers identifying as being from Black, Asian and minority ethnic backgrounds was 20%, and we achieved 18%. Representation of minority ethnic colleagues in the whole organisation is higher, at 36%. 46% of our senior managers identify as female, which is 8% short of our target – although 49% of our Ombudsman panel identify as female.
We know we need to reflect the communities we serve to provide the best service to our customers, so diversity, inclusion and wellbeing (DIW) are important to us. You can read more about what we’ve been doing in this area, in our DIW report for 2022.
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More data
People capability
How we performed Our aims: 2022/23 Variance from target 2021/22 Our staff engagement score is at 70% or above 70% 0% 79% At least 85% of our staff feel included, respected and accepted within the service 84% -1% 84% At least 20% of our senior managers identify as being from black, Asian or other minority ethnic backgrounds 18% -2% 15% 50% of our senior managers identify as female 46% -4% 45% Our overall staff attrition (including redundancies) is no more than 15% 17% 2% 26.6% Overall lost sickness time rate is no more than 3% 2.5% 0.5% 2.6% Sustainability How we performed Our aims: 2022/23 Variance from target 2021/22 Reduce our premises and facilities budget by 24% 35% -11% 32% Reduction in our carbon footprint of 45% 59.7% N/A N/A
Complaint resolution data
About this data
The number of non-Ombudsman resolutions were those resolved by one of our Investigator's and the number of Ombudsman resolutions were those resolved by final decision or resolved informally by one of our ombudsman.
We have also published the total number of resolutions. This total number also includes other closure reasons such as cases we could not look at due to jurisdiction reasons or where we have dismissed a complaint.
