What is the Financial Ombudsman Service (FOS)?

What it is

The Financial Ombudsman Service (FOS) is the UK’s independent dispute-resolution service for complaints about financial firms. It was set up under the Financial Services and Markets Act 2000 and is free for consumers — firms cover its running costs through annual levies and per-case fees. The FOS sits outside the courts, but its final decisions are binding on the firm if you accept them.

When the FOS investigates a complaint, it looks at what’s fair and reasonable in the circumstances, not just what’s strictly legal. It can order a lender to pay redress, refund charges, correct your credit file, or change the way it handles future cases. Awards typically include 8% statutory simple interest on any sums the firm should have paid you earlier. There are time limits to be aware of: you normally have to complain to the lender first and give them up to eight weeks to issue a final response. After that, you have six months from the date of their final response to refer the case to the FOS, and generally within six years of the event (or three years from when you could reasonably have known about it). The FOS is not a regulator — that’s the FCA’s job. The FOS is an adjudicator that decides individual disputes.

Why it matters for your claim

Every motor finance complaint route ends at the FOS if you and the lender can’t agree. You can take that route yourself — complain to the lender, wait for their response, then refer the case to the FOS — without paying a penny. That’s one of your free alternatives to using Total Claim, and it’s a perfectly valid way to pursue your complaint. The 2026 FCA redress scheme overlaps with FOS jurisdiction in places: complaints that fall outside the scheme’s reference window may still need to go through the FOS rather than the scheme itself. The FOS also publishes its decisions, so you can search past motor finance commission cases to see how similar complaints have been resolved before you decide which route suits you.