You've emailed your bank three times about a card payment you never made, and the only reply so far is an automated "we're looking into it" that arrived nine days ago. This is the point where most people either give up or start shouting on Twitter. Neither gets your money back. What actually works is a formal complaint that starts a clock — and knowing exactly what that clock does is worth more than any amount of hold-music patience.
Start with the bank, not the ombudsman
The Financial Ombudsman Service (FOS) won't touch your case until you've given the bank a fair run at fixing it first. That means a formal complaint — not a customer service chat, a proper complaint, ideally logged through the bank's app or website complaints form so there's a timestamp and a reference number. Most current account providers, from Barclays down to Monzo and Starling, have a dedicated complaints team separate from day-to-day support, and routing your issue there directly tends to move faster than working through a front-line adviser who has to escalate it anyway.
Be specific about what went wrong and what you want as a resolution. "Please investigate" gets a slower response than "I want the £340 refunded and the £15 overdraft charge it triggered reversed." Banks are required under the FCA's Consumer Duty to actually engage with what you're asking for, not just acknowledge that you're unhappy — vague complaints give them more room to send a vague reply.
The eight-week clock
Under the FCA's DISP 1.6 rules, a regulated firm has eight weeks from the date you first complain to send you a final response — or, at minimum, a letter explaining why it isn't ready yet and when it expects to be. If eight weeks pass with nothing, or if you get a final response you don't accept, you're free to take the complaint to FOS. You don't need permission from the bank to do this, and the bank can't extend the eight weeks by staying quiet.
Once you do get a final response, read the small print at the bottom. By law it has to mention the six-month deadline for referring the case to FOS — if that line is missing, the response technically isn't valid and the clock arguably hasn't started. In practice, most banks get this right, but it's worth checking before you assume you've missed your window.
What happens once the Ombudsman takes the case
Bringing a complaint to FOS costs nothing — the service is funded by a levy and case fees charged to financial businesses, not to you, and no solicitor is required. You submit your side, the bank submits its file, and an investigator looks at both against what's fair and reasonable in the circumstances, which isn't always the same as what the contract's small print says. If either side disagrees with the investigator's view, the case goes to an ombudsman for a final decision, and that decision is binding on the bank if you accept it — though not binding on you, so you can still walk away and pursue the matter elsewhere if you'd rather.
Timescales vary a lot by complaint type. Straightforward disputes over a wrongly applied fee or a mis-timed payment can resolve within a few months. Fraud, packaged account mis-selling and anything involving investment loss routinely take six months to a year, partly because FOS has a large caseload and partly because these cases need more digging into what the bank actually knew and when.
The award limit: £455,000 and rising every April
FOS can order a bank to pay compensation, and there's a cap on how much — though the cap only limits what FOS can formally direct, not what it can recommend. For complaints referred to FOS on or after 1 April 2026 about something the bank did wrong on or after 1 April 2019, the limit is £455,000. If the underlying issue happened before 1 April 2019, the ceiling drops to £205,000.
These figures move every April, and the trend has been steadily upward: £350,000 when the higher tier first applied in 2019, £355,000 from 2020, £375,000 from 2022, £415,000 from 2023, £430,000 from 2024, £445,000 from 2025, and now £455,000. Anything before April 2019 sits under the old £150,000 ceiling regardless of when you complain. If your loss genuinely exceeds the applicable limit, FOS will tell you and can still recommend the bank pay the rest — the business just isn't legally forced to.
On top of the award itself, FOS can direct interest where you were kept out of pocket. For cases referred from 1 January 2026 onward, the typical basis is a time-weighted average of the Bank of England base rate plus one percentage point, replacing the flat 8% simple rate that applied before that date. If a bank drags its feet on paying an accepted final decision, an ombudsman can also add late-payment interest — usually 8% simple — for every day beyond the 28-day deadline.
What the cap actually covers in practice
Most current-account disputes never get close to six figures. A wrongly charged overdraft fee, a botched Faster Payment, an account frozen without warning — these tend to resolve for anywhere from a few pounds to a few thousand. The eye-catching award limit exists mainly for investment advice gone wrong, mortgage misselling and cases where compounding losses run for years before anyone spots the problem.
Who FOS can and can't help
FOS covers banks, building societies, credit unions and any firm the FCA authorises to hold or move your money — that includes app-only banks like Monzo, Starling and Chase UK, and e-money issuers like Revolut, provided the specific product involved is FCA-regulated rather than run through an unregulated overseas arm. It doesn't cover firms that were never authorised in the first place, which is exactly why unregulated crypto exchanges and offshore "investment" schemes leave victims with nowhere formal to turn beyond the courts.
Coverage extends past individual consumers, too. Small businesses count as eligible complainants if their annual turnover is under £6.5 million and either their balance sheet is under £5 million or they employ fewer than 50 people. Charities qualify under a similar £6.5 million income threshold, and trusts qualify if their net asset value is under £5 million. A sole trader running a market stall has the same access as someone complaining about a personal current account; a mid-sized limited company with 80 staff generally doesn't, and would need to go through the courts or the Business Banking Resolution Service instead, depending on when the dispute arose.
The complaints that actually reach FOS
Looking at what fills the ombudsman's inbox year after year, a handful of categories dominate:
- Authorised Push Payment fraud — disputes over whether the bank should reimburse a scam payment under the mandatory APP reimbursement rules, and whether the customer showed "gross negligence" that lets the bank apply the 50% excess or refuse the claim entirely
- Unarranged overdraft charges and interest, particularly where a customer says the bank should have spotted financial difficulty earlier under Consumer Duty obligations
- Account closures with little or no notice, which banks can do under their terms but which still get challenged when no adequate explanation follows
- Packaged bank account mis-selling — being sold travel insurance, breakdown cover or phone insurance bundled into a monthly-fee account nobody checked was suitable
- Faster Payments and CHAPS sent to the wrong account, where confirmation-of-payee checks were bypassed, ignored or not properly explained
APP fraud complaints in particular have grown into one of the busiest single categories since the mandatory reimbursement scheme took effect, and disagreements over that 50% excess and the gross-negligence test show no sign of slowing down.
Writing a complaint that actually gets somewhere
Structure matters more than tone. State what happened, when, what the bank did or didn't do, and what outcome you want — refund, fee reversal, an apology, compensation for distress, or some combination. Attach evidence: screenshots of the app showing the disputed transaction, the reference number from your original complaint, copies of any correspondence. If you're complaining about fraud, note whether you reported it to Action Fraud, since banks and FOS both expect that step.
Keep a paper trail from day one — save every email, screenshot every chat transcript, and write down call dates and adviser names, because six months later, when the case reaches an ombudsman, that contemporaneous record carries far more weight than your memory of what someone promised over the phone. Don't accept a verbal "we'll sort it" as a substitute for a written final response; without that letter, you can't start the six-month countdown to FOS, and some banks have been known to let informal reassurances drag on for months with nothing on paper.
One thing worth knowing before you accept an ombudsman's final decision: doing so generally closes the door on taking the same dispute to court afterwards. If your loss might exceed what FOS could realistically award, or the case turns on a point of law rather than fairness, get independent legal advice before you tick "accept" — the time limits for court action keep running in the background the whole time your FOS case is open, regardless of how long the ombudsman takes to decide.
FOS versus the FSCS — don't mix them up
The Ombudsman resolves disputes about service and conduct — did the bank treat you fairly, did it make a mistake, does it owe you money for that mistake. The Financial Services Compensation Scheme, by contrast, steps in when a bank actually collapses and can't pay depositors back at all. You complain to FOS about a bad decision; you claim from FSCS when the institution itself is gone. The two schemes share an FCA-regulated ecosystem and both are free to use, but they solve entirely different problems, and mixing them up is one of the most common reasons a complaint gets sent back with "wrong service" stamped on it.