The Ombudsman’s Office was ordered to reconsider approval of a further financial
services ombudsman with a Court of Appeal ruling the Office was being overly protective
of its name. By administrative fiat, the
Ombudsman’s Office was prohibiting wider use of the title ‘ombudsman’, a
principle parliament had considered and rejected said the Court of Appeal.
Translated
literally, ‘ombudsman’ means people’s representative. The concept of a parliamentary ombudsman was
adopted from Scandinavia in 1962. Its function
is to ensure government observes the law.
Jealous of its independence, the Office has lobbied to prevent others
using the name. Attempts to prohibit
industry sectors setting up private dispute resolution services using the name
ombudsman in their title failed. The
Ombudsmen Act allows private use of the title, but only with consent of the
Chief Ombudsman. To date only two
dispute resolution schemes operating in New Zealand have been approved: The
Banking Ombudsman Scheme and the Insurance and Savings Ombudsman Scheme.
All financial
service providers are now required to join a dispute resolution scheme approved
by government. Of the four schemes
approved so far, the one operated by private company Financial Services
Complaints Ltd is by far the biggest. It
has more than 6500 participants. Learning
in 2015 that the Insurance and Savings Ombudsman Scheme had been given approval
the replace ‘savings’ with ‘financial services’ in its name, Financial Complaints
was stung into action. It asked
permission to also use the name ombudsman.
It feared that without the ombudsman moniker its service would be viewed
in the marketplace as inferior. Approval
was refused. Financial Complaints sued.
The Court
of Appeal ruled that administrative guidelines used by the Ombudsman’s Office
for name approval were too restrictive.
Financial Services Complaints Ltd v. Chief Ombudsman – Court of Appeal
(28.02.18)
18.046