Privacy Policy

The Office of the Financial Services Ombudsman is committed to ensuring that your personal information in our possession remains confidential and secure.In order for us to handle your complaint, we ask you to sign a complaint form containing an agreement concerning the exchange of information which we consider to be of a confidential nature. The agreement includes the following:

  • The Office will need to access personal details, including financial information about you, in order to deal with your complaint effectively. The Office will handle such information in the strictest confidence unless compelled by law to disclose such information.
  • The Office and other organisations and official bodies, including the financial institution you are complaining about, have the authority to exchange information about your complaint.
  • Your case may be published for educational purposes or be reflected in the OFSO’s statistics but without identifying the parties involved.
  • If at any time you are not satisfied with the process or recognise that further assistance in resolving your complaint may not be possible, you are free to take the matter to the court or elsewhere, and you may withdraw your consent in which case the OFSO will close its files.
  • You give your consent to the financial institution against whom you are complaining to release whatever information considered necessary to the OFSO to handle your complaint.
  • You acknowledge that the files of the OFSO and the financial institution against whom you are complaining and discussions between you and the financial institution and the OFSO are confidential and will not be used in any subsequent legal or other proceedings.
  • You also agree that the FSO and the staff of the OFSO and advisors will not be called upon to testify.

In return, the OFSO undertakes to:

  • Safeguard your personal information.
  • Take steps to protect your personal information against theft, misuse, unauthorised modification and have implemented policies regarding retention and destruction of information.
  • Require our staff to comply with these policies and practices as well.

You have the right of access to your personal information that you have provided to the OFSO and which is in our possession. However, you should contact your financial institution directly to access your personal information provided to us by the institution in the course of our dispute resolution process. The OFSO will not give you access to information generated in the course of our dispute resolution process.

A Complaint form may be generated from our website, printed, complete, signed and submitted personally or by mail to the OFSO. If  you submit it via email (which we hope to enable shortly) you do so at your own risk and we do not guarantee the security of your personal confidential information contained on the complaint form. In any event, the OFSO will not consider your complaint until it receives a signed copy.