The Irish Minister for Finance, Mr. Michael Noonan agreed new powers which grants “name-and-shame” authority to the Financial Services Ombudsman.New powers for FSOThe new laws will mean that financial service providers who are “failing their customerswill be publicly identified and incentivised to make real improvements” said Mr. Noonan.The new powers will come into effect on 1 September, 2013.Mr. Bill Prasifska, the Financial Services Ombudsman has been a vocal critic of the sector making repeated calls for such powers. He had said that attaining such powers would form a powerful incentive for banks to compete and provide better levels of customer service.Last week, Mr. Prasifska make a stinging attack on the banking sector for poor customer service in a number of areas, especially how banks handled customer complaints. He said making the complaints record of individual banks public would influence how they behave and that the measure would be “in the public interest and at no cost to the Exchequer“.
Mr Noonan said he understands the Ombudsman intends to publish his first report with the names of those offending financial services providers early next year.
