Australia’s Financial Ombudsman Service (FOS) is still receiving complaints against Storm Financial, despite the advisory firm being placed in receivership.
FOS investments, life insurance and superannuation ombudsman Alison Maynard confirmed that complaints were still being fielded against the collapsed financial planning firm.
However, she would not provide specific complaint numbers.
“We have received complaints that concern the Storm Financial situation. Some of them are complaints against Storm, some of them are complaints against lenders,” Maynard said.
“We’re still able to receive complaints against Storm Financial while they are in receivership. But once they have gone into liquidation we would be unable to receive new complaints.”
As well as the potential hurdle for complainants of Storm moving into liquidation, some of the dispute claims are at risk of exceeding FOS’ monetary limit, according to Maynard.
The monetary limit for complaints against a financial planning firm are $150,000 and against a bank it is $280,000, the FOS website said.
“If they are outside the monetary limits we would be unable to deal with the dispute,” Maynard said.
“As per normal, we would refer them to other sources of advice, and also I understand there is an investors’ group website that they can go to.”
Formerly known as the Financial Industry Complaints Service (FICS), FOS was founded in July last year after FICS merged with the Insurance Ombudsman Service (IOS) and Banking and Financial Services Ombudsman (BFSO).
Storm Financial closed its doors on 15 January 2009.
