PIMFA, the trade association for the wealth management, investment services and the financial advice and planning industry has today welcomed the decision by the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) and the Financial Ombudsman Service (FOS) that they will levy a charge on Claim’s Management Companies (CMC’s) following their call for input on modernising the redress system.
Simon Harrington, Head of Public Affairs at PIMFA said: “We welcome the FOS’s decision to proceed with its proposals to levy a charge to CMCs who bring cases forward to the FOS. Whilst we believe that there is eventual scope for this to be higher – and we believe it should eventually be equalised with requirements of respondent firms to contribute towards case fees – we are confident that this will go some way to addressing some of the practices that this proposal sought to prevent.’
‘As highlighted today in its joint call for input, too many meritless claims are currently being brought forward by CMCs which negatively impacts on the FOS’ resources as well as those of firms who already expend considerable time and cost in dealing with these claims well before they even reach the FOS.
‘We look forward to working together with FCA and FOS in exploring some of the options outlined in this paper to prevent this being the case but would stress that in order for these to be effective there needs to a consistent approach to regulation and enforcement across the entire regulatory regime for CMCs. This cannot simply apply to those which are regulated by the FCA.’
