The power to settle financial complaints.
The power to settle financial complaints.
This section answers a number of frequently-asked questions (FAQs) about:
who decides how much levy an FSA-regulated firm must pay?
Under the FSA's rules for funding the ombudsman service, each industry sector is placed in a relevant funding "block". These blocks mirror, as far as possible, the fee-blocks that apply for the FSA's own funding arrangements.
When setting our budget each year, we calculate the estimated cost of handling the complaints we expect to receive in relation to each industry block. We base this cost on the number of case-handling staff we believe we will need to deal with the complaints in each block. We then divide our expected costs for each block among the total number of firms in that block – in proportion to the amount of relevant business that each firm carries out.
The FSA consults annually on the levy that applies to each industry block and it both calculates and collects the levy from FSA-regulated firms.
For more details see our special factsheet: