Having just published the results of a survey conducted earlier this summer, Panacea Advisor says that 66% of its 212 respondents believe that the UK's Financial Ombudsman Service 'helps people create a complaint where none existed.'

This was one of 15 questions that the survey asked of the financial advice community in the UK. One respondent complained: "Where they feel inclined, they will stray from the complaint in order to favour the customer with a positive outcome even if it has not been the subject of a complaint." Another said: "There was a case where a client was making a complaint against a defined benefit scheme, but when FOS realised the company concerned wasn't on its register, the FOS employee suggested the client complain against us!" One respondent took a kinder view of the ombudsman's habit: "I believe that complainants are apt to add to their initial complaint when in conversation with the Ombudsman and I know that FOS will look at the wider picture if they feel it is reasonable to do so." Another had a theory about why this is: "Yes, there is no doubt that the process is not to seek a resolution of the complaint made, but to ensure that there can be no suggestion that the FOS has not investigated any opportunity for a clients' complaint to succeed."

The most damning comment was: "The FOS demonstrate the view that all complainants are innocent and honest and that the Industry is corrupt and incompetent. So, if they can dig into a complaint and find an alternative angle they will do it."

Another question, to which 83% answered in the affirmative, was: “Do you think FOS rules and process [sic] place an advisor or firm in a 'guilty until you prove your innocence' position from outset [sic] or have you generally found them to be fair?”

Comments were as follows.

• "I have yet to see an initial complaint letter which does not make the adviser look guilty, otherwise there would be no complaint. It has to be, therefore, that the adjudicator is biased towards the complainant until the defence is provided."
• "Absolutely. To the point that I have decided to stop investment advising in the next 12 months. I now consider the risks too high. All of the cases I have read, or been involved in, seem to work on that basis - 'prove that you didn't do it.'"
• "Our judgment was based on the argument that the complainants view had to be more likely and not just as likely as our own."
• "It is difficult to answer this however the rules mitigate against a 'fair trial' and in that respect there is an imbalance. As Walter Merricks [the first 'combined ombudsman'] famously stated to a Cardiff conference in 2003, it is like a game of football where one side is playing uphill."

Worryingly, the survey also observed the following.

• 55% of respondents had no idea whether the FOS was accountable to anyone.
• 72% had experienced false or manufactured claims for compensation.
• 95% thought that an advisor should have the same rights as the person who complains against him to appeal to the courts against a decision rather than ask for an expensive judicial review.

Copies of the results have been sent to the Parliamentary Treasury Select Committee, the FOS and the Financial Conduct Authority. The FCA sent Panacea Advisor a letter that thanked it for “sharing the findings of your latest FOS survey [which] makes for interesting and occasionally provocative reading”.

Panacea Advisor, established in 2007, is a resource that supports financial advisors, mortgage brokers and paraplanners with news, views, tools, research, educational support and business development ideas that emanate from product providers and support services. It hopes, in regulatory terminology, that the FOS will "take learnings" from the survey.