The Financial Ombudsman Service (FOS) has announced that in decisions on disputes with consumers, the financial firms will be named.

Currently offering anonymised case summaries on its website, FOS does not have to publish its rulings. These case summaries include technical notes explaining FOS’ approach to complaints about payment protection insurance (PPI).

There have been two occasions recently where FOS has published a decision in full; the decision on volcanic ash and travel insurance in March 2011.

The Government has decided that FOS needs to publish more of its work – this is part of the financial regulation reforms.

Final decisions will appear in full on the service’s website soon after they have been made.

However, if part of the publication may interfere with an investigation or aid a criminal activity, FOS is able to decide whether the decision should be published in its entirety or not.

Both the Government and FOS firmly believe in protecting the consumer’s identity in each published case.

The draft legislation said that FOS would need to carefully draft each decision ‘being mindful of the need to protect consumer information […] without losing the clarity or effectiveness of the decision itself either for the parties involved or for third-party readers.’

It is essential that the identity of the financial business is clear throughout the published decision, this will often be evident from the product names, business practices and policy words. Therefore, if there is a need to protect the identity of the financial business, then the decision will call for very careful drafting. The draft legislation explained that the latter would often make the decision difficult to understand.

 Given the fact that there is huge public interest in finding out the identity of which financial business the decision may be protecting, any remainders that point to a financial business may damage other financial firms.

In any case, only information deemed substantially confidential will be withheld and financial businesses will have to persuade FOS whether this is necessary or not.

£600,000 will be spent, during the first year, on the publication of the decisions and £200,000 during the second year.

FOS is carrying our research to test what the impact of the decisions will be with consumers and financial businesses.