FOS rejects more than half of complaints against advisers

Advisers have seen the number of complaints against them soar over the past year, however figures show that more than half of the cases were dropped by the ombudsman.

The Financial Ombudsman Service's (FOS's) annual review, published today, revealed that whereas complaints involving advisers almost doubled over the last year to a total of 4,139, the proportion of cases against IFAs that were actually upheld fell to 42%, compared with 54% last year. This means that only about 200 additional cases involving IFAs were handled by the FOS in the last financial year, while IFAs' share of overall cases continued to stand at 1%. Chief ombudsman Natalie Ceeney said: "For the second year running the proportion of complaints the ombudsman received about IFA's...