The Financial Ombudsman Service is to freeze its individual case fee at £750 for a third year as its strives to reduce the financial strain of its services on regulated firms.

The FOS will also allow consumers to “self-serve” complaints through a digital portal to cut down on administration and help deal with a backlog of cases.

Among the key details in its 2023/24 Plans and Budget published today, the FOS aims to:

• Freeze the individual case fee at £750
• Freeze its compulsory jurisdiction levy at £106m
• Reduce its voluntary jurisdiction levy from £700,000 to £500,000

Businesses will continue to get three free cases per year but group-account fee arrangement businesses will not receive any free cases, it said.

Overall the FOS expects to resolve 204,000 complaints in the coming year including 70,000 complaints still unresolved from 2022/23.

It is expecting a big rise in complaints about investment and pensions from 13,800 to 15,900.

The FOS said it had seen an increase in complaints about suitability of advice to transfer pensions, following coverage of British Steel Pension Scheme (BSPS) consumer redress scheme.

It has also seen a rise in investment and cryptocurrency scams, more complaints relating to surrender and execution delays and performance and portfolio management complaints due to cost of living concerns.

It also believes that the overall impact of market volatility may lead to more complaints in the coming year.

To speed up complaint handling the FOS will enable customers to “self-serve, where appropriate, through our digital transformation programme.”

This will allow consumers to submit their complaints and paperwork through a digital portal and potentially cut down on admin and delays.

The FOS has accepted that its backlog of cases needs tackling. It said: “Over the last year we’ve made good progress in bringing down our backlog and waiting times, but there’s more for us to do to provide the best service to all our customers.

"To improve service and cut its backlog its plans a self-serve complaints procedure, better operational efficiency, a workforce with the right skills for the future, an updated funding model for 2024/25 and to develop a data-driven prevention strategy, using data and insight to improve performance."