The Financial Ombudsman Service has completed its redundancy consultation period and confirmed that it is to make 200 redundancies.
In March this year, it emerged that Fos was to make 150 redundancies and had entered a consultation period.
The consultation period ended on April 21, 2021 and Fos has now confirmed that it is to make 200 redundancies across its “mass claims department.”
A spokesperson said: “The Financial Ombudsman Service is a customer-led organisation and the size and shape of our service needs to reflect the demand to ensure we provide a cost-effective service.
"We have consistently said that we expect the size of the organisation to reduce as our work on PPI comes to an end following the FCA’s August 2019 deadline to complain.
"We will continue to work with staff and their representatives going forward.”
This news came despite the ombudsman having a complaints backlog of 158,000 complaints.
The complaints had sparked Fos chief executive Caroline Wayman's resignation in March, after seven years in the role and 22 years at the firm.
In April, Fos appointed Nausicaa Delfas as its interim chief executive and chief ombudsman, to take over from Wayman.
These latest redundancies continue from last year when Fos said it paid almost £4m in exit packages to staff leaving the organisation in the last financial year, with more than £3m spent on redundancy payouts.
The ombudsman made 128 staff cuts in the 2019/20 financial year, some of which were part of a wider redundancy programme and the service had already made 116 redundancies the previous year.
The highest payout was made to David Cresswell, former strategy director at the ombudsman, who left the service in April 2019 with a redundancy payment of £137,202.
sonia.rach@ft.com
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