The Financial Ombudsman Service will freeze its case fees at £650 for Financial Planner respondents for its 2025/26 year.

The Ombudsman, which deals with consumers complaints about financial providers and advisers, introduced lower costs for respondent businesses last year.

It will also freeze its compulsory and voluntary jurisdiction levies, it said today.

It has frozen the fees despite expecting a 20% (year-on-year) increase in case resolution to 270,000 cases for 2025/26.

However, the maximum amount the Ombudsman can require a business to pay when it upholds a complaint is increasing to £445,000 for complaints about acts or omissions that occurred on or after 1 April 2019. This limit it set by the FCA and adjusted each year to keep pace with inflation.

The FOS said it is seeing a surge in complaints, most notably an influx of cases related to motor finance commission which account for nearly half of the Ombudsman’s current 190,000 cases.

It said it expects to have received over 330,00 cases by the end of the 2024/25 year.

The Ombudsman introduced a new charging model for claims management firms and other professional representatives from 1 April to “ensure fairness and value for money.”

James Dipple-Johnstone, interim Chief Ombudsman at the Financial Ombudsman Service, said: “Our decision to maintain current case fee levels and levies for businesses represents a saving of nearly £70m to industry compared to pricing in 2023/24. 

“We will continue to share our insight with businesses to help them to better understand why complaints occur so they can resolve them earlier or stop them occurring in the future."

The Ombudsman has committed to providing firms with better insight into complaint trends. It said this would help firms to address the root causes of disputes and reduce the likelihood of cases escalating.