Who will be responsible for which complaints? Laura Slattery explains the new authority

From this summer, a single financial regulator will establish a one-stop shop for consumers looking to complain about misleading financial advice or who feel they have been mis-sold an insurance, savings, mortgage or investment product.

Everybody likes to moan to their family and friends about close encounters with poor service, bad value deals and shoddy goods in their daily travails as a consumer.

But unless your family and friends are senior officials in the Central Bank, the Office of the Director of Consumer Affairs or certain other regulatory bodies, they won't be able to help you if you're being ripped off on a financial product.

The trick to complaining successfully is not to damage your vocal cords or your personal relationships by ranting at the wrong person. Instead, bide your time and find the right person on which to vent your spleen.

At the moment, if you have a dispute with your mortgage broker that cannot be settled by correspondence between the two parties, the Director of Consumer Affairs is the place to contact. But if the problem relates to a mortgage agreement or other account as operated by a bank or building society, the Ombudsman for Credit Institutions, Mr Gerry Murphy, may investigate your case.

Similarly, if your problem is with an insurance broker, the Central Bank will handle the complaint.

If the dispute is with the insurance company itself, the Insurance Ombudsman, Ms Caroline Gill, can look into the matter.

From next month, consumers with disputes with members of the Irish Brokers Association (IBA) will also be able to take their complaint to the Insurance Ombudsman.

Rulings on disputes under both these voluntary, industry-funded Ombudsman schemes are binding on the company involved. Consumers are free to ignore their decisions if they find them unsatisfactory, perhaps in favour of the most extreme route to getting your voice heard: taking a case to court.

This confusing range of regulators and complaints-handlers has prompted fears that consumers, not knowing where to turn, have simply learned to let go, despite the financial implications.

Once the Irish Financial Services Regulatory Authority (IFSRA) formally starts to operate, following the expected enactment of legislation in June, consumers will be able to call one telephone number or drop in to one address to lodge their complaint.

But the question of who handles consumer complaints is still complicated.

The single financial regulator is intended to be a one-stop shop for consumers, but within the authority there will be two separate complaints-handlers at work - Ms Mary O'Dea, the recently appointed consumer director of IFSRA and a new financial services ombudsman, whose powers and remit are still being finalised under the legislation.

"We don't want consumers to end up in the situation where they have to determine what type of complaint should be lodged with either the IFSRA or the ombudsman," Ms O'Dea has said.

The office of the financial services ombudsman will have a "separate, independent function" from IFSRA, according to a spokesman for the Central Bank / IFSRA.

The interim board of IFSRA has proposed that it is operated by staff seconded from IFSRA. The ombudsman is also likely to report on certain cases to the consumer director.

IFSRA's interim board has proposed that consumers should have to leave their complaint with either the person or institution they are complaining about or the relevant industry-funded ombudsman for a period of 12 weeks before approaching the statutory financial services ombudsman.

It is expected that the industry-funded ombudsmen will sit on a council supporting the statutory ombudsman.

So how will the lines be drawn between who is responsible for which consumer complaints? In theory, somebody with an unresolved dispute could ring up hoping to bring their case to the attention of the financial services ombudsman and find it is instead lumped together with a mounting complaints file on the desk of the consumer director.

The ombudsman will deal with individual disputes, but if the complaint fits into a persistent pattern or trend, then it will be the responsibility of the consumer director to launch a full investigation into practices at the firm or institution involved.

For example, if a financial institution has made a mistake with your mortgage account, perhaps basing repayments on the wrong term as a result of human or computer error, and you are not satisfied by the redress on offer, then it is likely your case will be handled by the financial services ombudsman.

But if you felt you were not given full information at the time a broker sold you a mortgage, for example if you took out an endowment mortgage and the broker failed to explain that the endowment policy was not guaranteed to pay off your mortgage, then he or she could be in breach of IFSRA's codes of conduct.

The Central Bank's current guidelines oblige investment intermediaries to outline their complaints procedures in their terms of business letter and inform consumers of their right to refer unresolved complaints to the authority.

Intermediaries have pointed out, however, that many of the regulations, such as the requirements to do a "factfind" on the consumer's financial history and write a "reason why" letter on why a particular product or transaction was suitable to their needs, apply only to intermediaries and not to the banks, insurance companies or other tied agents.

"They do need to bring the whole financial sector under one set of rules for everybody," says Mr Paul O'Neill, managing director of insurance intermediary firm J.P. O'Neill.

In particular, he welcomes the Central Bank's recent official recognition of a single qualification for advisers in the financial services industry, the QFA, recommending that consumers being advised by tied agents check their business card for their qualifications.

"When people see a life assurance or pensions adviser, they see salesperson in inverted commas, and there's a bit of distrust there," he says.

The industry has done this to itself, he believes, by doing too much execution-only business and ignoring the crucial advice process.

If more complaints mean substandard brokers are weeded out of the industry, they should be encouraged, he adds.

The more consumers are informed of their rights, the more likely it is that they will spot bad deals or poor service before they sign any contracts.

Mr Michael Kiernan, an authorised adviser who gives discounts on commission, believes a number of people were unknowingly sold a pension with a 50 per cent upfront commission charge on the first year's premiums, even in the last 12 months.

"No one ever reads the document," he says. Long-winded, 30-page documents for travel insurance or car finance deals are usually ignored, he believes. "From a consumer point of view, it's all gobbledegook."

A spokesman for IFSRA said the authority would work on education within the industry and providing information to consumers, as well as the handling of complaints.