The Financial Ombudsman Service has frozen individual case fees at £750 and its levy at £106m for the year 2023/24.

These are in contained in its budget for the upcoming year that identifies five key transformation areas.

It wants to build on the progress it has made on bringing down backlog times and will focus on its digital transformation programme.

Other areas of focus include building a workforce for the future, the creation of an updated funding model for 2024/25 and to develop a data-driven prevention strategy.

This follows FOS chair Zahida Manzoor telling the Treasury Select Committee on 14 March 2023 that the FOS customer backlog is decreasing and the situation “seems to be improving”.

According to FOS, it has reduced the backlog from 90,000 cases as of May 2021 to around 37,000 as of March 2022.

In 2023/24 the FOS expects to receive 184,000 complaints and resolve 204,000 complaints.

Aside from freezing individual case fees at £750 and the levy at £106m announced in the budget FOS also said it will:

• Reduce its voluntary jurisdiction levy from £700,000 to £500,000
• Businesses will continue to get three free cases
• Group-account fee arrangement businesses will not receive any free cases

On 20 March, FOS announced an increase to the award limit that is the maximum amount it can require a financial business to pay when complaints are upheld.

The limit is adjusted each year in line with inflation.

The Financial Conduct Authority has confirmed that the FOS award limit will go up from 1 April 2023.

It will now be £415,000 for complaints referred to FOS on or after 1 April 2019.

And it will be £190,000 for complaints referred to the FOS before 1 April 2019.