Complaining to the Financial Ombudsman about your mortgage

If your mortgage lender or broker has treated you badly, you can take the complaint to the Financial Ombudsman Service. It is free, it is independent of the firms it covers, and it can order a lender to put things right, including paying compensation for distress or inconvenience¹.

The ombudsman can look at complaints about how a lender handled your case, and it covers mortgages alongside other borrowing². In the six months from January to June 2024 it recorded 3,685 mortgage and home finance complaints, a small slice of a caseload that runs into the hundreds of thousands across all products⁴.

Before the ombudsman will step in, you have to complain to the firm itself and give it eight weeks to respond. If it does not send a final response in that time, or you are unhappy with what it says, the complaint can go to the ombudsman⁵.

What the Financial Ombudsman can look at on your mortgage

The ombudsman is not a regulator and it does not set mortgage rules. It follows rules set by the Financial Conduct Authority, and it decides individual disputes between a customer and a firm⁷. Its role is to look at how the lender or broker behaved, not to rewrite the terms of your mortgage.

It can consider complaints from individual customers, and from customers who share a financial product or service, such as a shared bank account or a joint mortgage⁷. It can also consider complaints from microenterprises and small and medium-sized businesses, which matters if you have a buy-to-let or a business-linked loan¹⁰.

The scope is broad. Consumer credit complaints cover payday loans, debt collection, home credit and catalogue shopping, and other types of lending and borrowing including mortgages³. Within mortgages, the ombudsman can look at complaints about advice you received from a financial business, about mortgage arrears and charges, about not being able to change or move your mortgage or take a payment holiday, and about repossession both before possession takes place and after it has happened¹¹.

What it cannot do is decide that a rate is simply too high. It looks at whether the firm followed the rules and treated you fairly. If a lender applied a rate it should not have, or failed to move you to a cheaper deal it should have offered, that is a complaint it can consider.

Common mortgage complaints: rates, arrears, charges and delays

The ombudsman publishes the kinds of mortgage complaints it sees most often, and they cluster around a handful of themes.

On rates and switching, it handles complaints about delays arranging a new mortgage or a new interest rate that left the borrower on a higher rate, lenders not telling borrowers their interest rate product was ending in time, being unable to arrange a new interest rate, and lenders not offering new interest rate products to existing customers, the group often called mortgage prisoners¹.

On arrears and charges, it sees complaints that a lender applied unfair charges such as arrears fees, legal costs and field agent visit fees; refused a concession the borrower asked for, such as a temporary switch to interest-only or a term extension; tried unfairly to repossess; would not help when the borrower could not afford payments; or harassed the borrower about arrears².

Where a lender has not done enough to help, the ombudsman may tell it to pay compensation for any distress or inconvenience⁸. It can also look at whether a lender considered the options it should have, such as changing the payment due date, offering a temporary reduced payment arrangement, offering a new interest rate, extending the term, or adding the arrears to the outstanding balance¹¹.

Complain to your lender or broker first: the eight-week rule

Every mortgage complaint starts with the firm. You complain to the company involved, and it has eight weeks to look into things and reply⁵. That eight-week clock runs from the date you complain, not from the date the problem happened¹².

If the firm sends a final response letter and you are happy with it, the matter usually ends there. If it does not send a final response within eight weeks, or you are unhappy with what it says, you can bring the complaint to the ombudsman using its complaint form⁵. You do not need the firm's permission, and you do not have to wait for a final letter if the eight weeks have passed.

The same structure applies across financial products. With a bank complaint, the route is customer services, then a formal complaint with eight weeks for a final response, then the free Financial Ombudsman Service¹³. In Northern Ireland the guidance is the same: give the bank at least eight weeks to try to resolve the complaint, after which it should send a final decision letter telling you how to contact the ombudsman¹⁴.

If you would rather put your complaint in writing, free sample letters are available from debt advice charities. National Debtline publishes a letter to contact your lender before complaining to the Financial Ombudsman Service¹⁵.

When you can take it to the ombudsman

You can bring a complaint to the ombudsman if you are unhappy with the firm's final response, or if the business does not reply in time¹⁶. The same rule appears across the ombudsman's guidance: if the company does not send a final response letter within eight weeks, or you are unhappy with its response, you can bring the complaint to the ombudsman¹⁷.

The ombudsman can only look at complaints about services regulated by the Financial Conduct Authority¹⁸. That is the boundary that decides most cases. If the firm is authorised and the activity is one the FCA regulates, the ombudsman can usually consider it. If not, it cannot.

There are time limits as well as the eight-week rule. For some products the ombudsman expects a complaint within a set period of the problem or of the firm's final response, and it will tell you if your complaint is out of time. The ombudsman's own guidance on who it can help sets out the eligibility rules in full⁷.

If the ombudsman cannot help, it can provide details of other ombudsman schemes covering complaints in areas such as energy and housing¹⁶. That matters if your problem sits partly outside financial services, for example a dispute that is really about a surveyor's report or a builder's work.

Buy-to-let mortgages and firms the ombudsman cannot cover

Most buy-to-let lending sits outside the ombudsman's compulsory jurisdiction, because it is treated as a commercial rather than a consumer matter. There is an exception. The compulsory jurisdiction of the Financial Ombudsman Scheme extends to complaints relating to the act or omission of a registered consumer buy-to-let mortgage firm¹⁹. Part 16 of the Financial Services and Markets Act 2000, which sets up the Ombudsman Scheme, applies to complaints against these registered firms as if they were within the compulsory jurisdiction²⁰.

In practice, that means a buy-to-let borrower whose loan was arranged by a firm registered for consumer buy-to-let business may be able to complain, while a purely commercial buy-to-let loan from an unregistered lender may fall outside. If you are unsure which applies to you, the ombudsman's eligibility guidance is the place to check⁷.

The bigger limit is authorisation. If you deal with a firm that is not authorised, or that does not have permission for the activities you need, you will not have access to the Financial Ombudsman if you want to complain⁹. That is why checking the FCA Register before you borrow, and again before you complain, matters.

Where a broker or other third party made the mistake, the ombudsman cannot restructure your mortgage account, but it can tell them to pay the money to your mortgage account instead⁸. That is a meaningful remedy even when the firm that caused the problem is not your lender.

How mortgage paperwork tells you where to complain

You do not have to guess where to complain. Mortgage paperwork is required to tell you.

Under the FCA's mortgage conduct rules, the offer document must include information on how to complain to the firm about its services in relation to the contract, and whether complaints may be referred to the Financial Ombudsman Service²². The same requirement appears in the rules on disclosure at the offer stage: the contact details section of the offer document must include information on how to complain to the firm and whether or not complaints may subsequently be referred to the Financial Ombudsman Service²³.

That means your mortgage offer, and the documents that come with it, should name the firm's complaints route and confirm whether the ombudsman is available. If your paperwork does not say, ask the firm directly, and check the firm on the FCA Register⁹.

If your complaint is about a valuation or survey, the ombudsman may ask for the report or survey itself, the mortgage application form, information your lender gave you about the types of inspection available, the lender's instructions to the surveyor, and builders' reports and estimates for repairs²⁵. Keeping those documents together makes the complaint easier to pursue.

What it costs and where to get free help

Bringing a complaint to the Financial Ombudsman Service is free⁶. The service is free and easy to use, and it is funded by the firms it covers rather than by consumers²⁶.

That matters because complaints about mortgages and other financial products attract claims management companies, which charge for work you can do yourself. If you are unhappy with the conduct of a claims company, you can complain to the Financial Conduct Authority²⁷. You do not need to pay anyone to bring a mortgage complaint to the ombudsman.

Free, impartial help is available if you want support with the complaint or with the underlying money problem. MoneyHelper offers guidance on money matters including joint accounts and shared borrowing¹³. Debt advice charities such as National Debtline publish sample letters and guides for complaining to a lender¹⁵. Shelter offers housing advice, including what to do if your lender starts court action and how to sell your home to avoid repossession²⁸.

If your complaint is about a scam or a payment you did not authorise, there are separate routes. If you are unhappy with how your bank responds to a scam complaint, you can take the matter further by referring it to the Financial Ombudsman Service³⁰.