The Financial Ombudsman Service (FOS) has published a consultation aiming to help it work through pandemic-driven complaints.

This two-week consultation will close on Monday 18 October at 5.00pm. The FOS will publish its next steps and implement its plans by 1 November.

The consultation explores a range of initiatives and innovations that could enable it to move faster and help more customers.

This includes engaging with businesses differently to move complaints along more quickly.

It also suggests initiatives to free up investigators’ time, such as routing calls through other teams.

The consultation also considers focusing triage in some areas such as fraud and scams.

In its plans for 2020/21, the FOS anticipated receiving 145,000 new non-PPI complaints. Yet, it ended the financial year having received over 237,000.

This is because many businesses struggled during the pandemic to respond to complaints within eight weeks.

As a result, more complaints were referred to the FOS.

Operational pressures on businesses have also contributed to delay firms’ ability to respond to requests for information from the FOS, making the progression of some complaints more difficult.

The FOS said it closed 99% of the volume of non-PPI complaints it set out to resolve last year.

But this surge in demand left it with more outstanding cases than expected.

It started the current financial year with around 90,000 complaints waiting to be investigated.

The FOS said it is on track to exceed the complaint resolution target set out in its plans for the current financial year.

Yet, it would still end 2021/22 with a significant queue.

The Ombudsman is still looking to appoint a new chief executive after Caroline Wayman left the role.

Until now, Nausicaa Delfas has been acting as interim chief executive.