About us

How we handle your complaints

Furness Building Society is a Member of the Financial Ombudsman Service's scheme and is committed to providing you with a first class service. However, we recognise that there may be an occasion that you feel that we may not have done this and you wish to make a complaint. It is our aim to ensure that all complaints are dealt with speedily and at the earliest stage.

We will try to ensure that your complaint is resolved by the close of business on the business day following receipt of your complaint. If this is not possible it is our aim to resolve complaints within ten business days, and at the latest 8 weeks.

This sets out our procedures if you make a complaint.

  1. The Furness will send a written acknowledgement of a complaint within five business days of its receipt, giving the name or job title of the person handling the complaint, together with this Complaint Handling Procedure;
  2. if we have been able to resolve the complaint within the initial five days, the details will be confirmed in our final response to you;
  3. if we have not been able to resolve your complaint within five days we will send you within four weeks of receiving your complaint either:
    1. a final response, or if we have not been able to do this;
    2. a holding response explaining why we are not in a position to resolve the complaint and an indication of when we next expect to contact you (which will be within eight weeks from the time we receive your complaint);
  4. we will endeavour to send you our final response within eight weeks of receiving your complaint, however:
    1. if we are unable to do this, we will tell you our reasons for the further delay and indicate when we expect to provide a final response;
    2. we will send you details of the Financial Ombudsman Service’s scheme and confirm that you may refer your complaint to them if you are either dissatisfied with our response or with any further delay on our part in providing this;
    3. if we have not been able to resolve the complaint but we believe there is still a reasonable chance of doing so then at this stage we may ask you if you are agreeable to extending the period before referring to the Financial Ombudsman Service;
    4. we would emphasise that we will attempt to resolve your complaint or to issue our final response well within the stated ‘maximum’ time of eight weeks.
  5. when you receive the final response from us, if you are not satisfied then you must ensure that you refer the complaint to the Financial Ombudsman Service within 6 months from the date of our final response.

We will cooperate fully with the Financial Ombudsman Service and comply promptly with any settlements or awards made by it.