Our staff are a valuable asset and they come from many different areas: private and corporate legal practice, banking and investment, conciliation, alternative dispute resolution, financial counselling, insurance, regulatory bodies, communication and marketing, administration, and a range of financial services providers.
With the increased levels in disputes, we have been recruiting more people. Internal recruitment allows us to share skills and experience across the dispute resolution groups, while external recruitment has brought us perspectives from industry and other dispute resolution schemes.
Cross-functional teams have been created to bring together skills from the previous schemes as well as providing the opportunity to engage new staff. Support teams operate across groups, while dedicated case management teams have improved our capacity to handle the increased volume of work during this period.
As at 30 June 2009, the Financial Ombudsman Service employed 134 full-time and 78 part-time staff, including members of decision-maker panels.
See the Financial Ombudsman Service structure
We are currently reviewing how we operate and handle disputes, looking at areas of leading practice and identifying where there is room for improvement. Our aim is to develop a single, robust set of processes and procedures that support the newly established Terms of Reference and enhance our dispute resolution operations.
The basic structure of our dispute handling process can be broken into four broad steps:
See the Financial Ombudsman Service dispute handling process