The power to settle financial complaints.
The power to settle financial complaints.
25 May 2005
Abbey National plc ("Abbey") has agreed with its regulator, the Financial Services Authority (FSA), to review the decisions it made on a large number of mortgage endowment complaints which it previously rejected. There are more details about this on the FSA's website.
If Abbey rejected your complaint about your mortgage endowment between 1 January 2000 and 25 May 2005 your complaint could be one of those included in Abbey's review. There are some exceptions for complaints that Abbey correctly referred to other responsible firms and complaints that the Financial Ombudsman Service has already considered or is currently in the process of considering.
If you sent us your complaint a while ago, and we have already accepted it for investigation, your case will remain with us. We will write to you shortly to confirm this.
If you have only recently contacted us to request our complaint form - or if you hadn't returned a completed complaint form to us by 25 May - you should check whether your complaint is included in Abbey's review. If it is, you should wait for Abbey to write to you about what happens next. You can contact Abbey on 0800 280 2480 (Abbey's mortgage endowment review helpline).
If we've already looked at your complaint and concluded that we couldn't uphold it, neither Abbey nor the ombudsman will look at your complaint again.
But if we weren't able to look at your complaint because you referred it to the ombudsman too late - that is, you referred it to us more than six months after you received a final letter from Abbey - your complaint may now be included in Abbey's review. If this is the case - and you remain dissatisfied after Abbey has looked again at your complaint - you may complain to us at the end of Abbey's process.
No. Abbey will be reviewing cases according to guidelines set out by its regulator, the FSA. You should not need any special help or support if your case is reviewed.
The ombudsman service is a free and informal way of getting disputes resolved. We decide if a complaint is valid by looking at the facts of the case - and we prefer to hear from you in your own words. If you decide to employ someone to handle your complaint for you - for example, a claims management company - you will have to pay their costs yourself. This could mean paying them part of any compensation we might award.