Ombudsman's slim grasp of intra-fund advice disputes
The Financial Ombudsman Service (FOS) has admitted it does not keep specific records relating to the number of intra-fund advice disputes it handles, but it believes they are at a relatively low level.
The absence of specific information about intra-fund advice disputes was revealed in a late addendum to its submission to the Parliamentary Joint Committee (PJC) reviewing the Government's Future of Financial Advice (FOFA) bills.
The PJC is expected to hand down its report today, with Coalition members expected to issue a dissenting report based on continuing differences around opt-in and annual fee disclosure arrangements.
However, in the information it provided to the PJC just two weeks ago, the FOS admitted "we do not keep records to indicate whether disputes about financial advice relate to intra-fund advice. So we do not have statistics on the prevalence of intra-fund advice disputes".
The best that FOS could offer was that Investments, Life Insurance and Superannuation ombudsman Alison Maynard "becomes aware of the details of many of the financial advice disputes we receive".
"According to Ms Maynard, we only receive a small number of intra-fund advice disputes - perhaps three or four a year," it said.
The FOS said manual searches of its database indicated that three of the disputes it had received since 1 January, 2010, out of 2,235 disputes, had been about intra-fund advice.
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