The Financial Ombudsman Service (FOS) is on a hiring spree, increasing staff numbers by around 25 per cent in around nine months to cope with record levels of complaints across the financial services market.
Colin Neave, chief ombudsman at FOS, said complaints to the service had continued on an upward trend this year, with banking and finance complaints up around 35 per cent and complaints across investments up around 75 per cent.
Neave said the figures, while large, are not unexpected considering the current economic conditions.
In July last year when the Banking & Finance Services Ombudsman, the Financial Industry Complaints Service and the Insurance Ombudsman Service merged the service was made-up of around 170 employees that dealt with complaints.
That number has increased to just over 200 people, which deal with more than 80 per cent of Australia's financial disputes.
"It's fair to say that our staffing levels increased not quite commensurately with the volume of complaints but we have been hiring lately so staff levels will be appropriate as time goes by," he said.
"We're confident that the hiring's that we already engaged in plus what we've already engaged in will be sufficient to handle the workload."
The FOS board has also changed. Michael Lavarch replaces Peter Daly, previous chair at Financial Industry Complaints and the Insurance Ombudsman Service, as chair in June.
Lavarch was elected to the FOS board in July last year and previously chaired the Banking & Finance Services Ombudsman.
Despite the level of activity FOS is experiencing, Neave said the Terms of Reference drafting process, which aims to provide one standard reference document across all financial services, may be presented to ASIC ahead of time.
"Drafting of the terms of reference and explanatory guidelines has reached the stage that the final form will be considered by the FOS board very shortly," said Neave.
"We were required by ASIC to have the new terms of reference in a form to hand in by June 30 this year, we're expecting to be able to do that by the end of the month, just a few weeks early but that depends on the board."
