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How to start a complaint using the BBRS

Before you submit a complaint to the BBRS you should have:

  • Already made a complaint about the issue to your bank
  • Obtained a response from your bank (or received none within a reasonable time)
  • Not received a satisfactory outcome
  • Considered whether your business and its complaint are of a kind that the BBRS can consider

Please get in touch if you wish to discuss any of these points as they relate to your case.

How long do you have to complain?

In general, you must have made a complaint to your bank within six years after the problem arose. There are some exceptions to this and if you think this might affect you, please contact us.

If your complaint is eligible for the Financial Ombudsman Service, you must take it there. If you are unsure about your eligibility for that service, you can find details here.

Important: The Financial Ombudsman Service has a deadline for submission of complaint(s) of six months after the date of the bank’s final response letter to you. If you miss this deadline, you may lose the opportunity to have your complaint independently reviewed.

Additional information on time bars can be found here.

How to submit a complaint to the BBRS

Once you have registered your case, we will appoint a customer champion, who will guide and support you throughout the process.

You will be asked to provide more details about your case and provide any relevant evidence.

As part of this process, we will contact your bank to ask for relevant personal and commercial information so that we can start to assess your case. We will share the information that you have provided to us with your bank, and share with you information the bank provides to us about your case.

Concessionary cases

The BBRS is mainly available for those eligible SMEs that have not had the opportunity to have their complaint assessed by another review.

The BBRS’ rules mean that some cases may be able to be considered, even if they have been ruled ineligible. It is important to explore if this option might apply to your case.

For more information on such cases and the circumstances under which the BBRS may be able to consider them, please click here.

How we process cases

  • Registration

As part of our complaints registration form, you can inform us of your preferred contact method, such as telephone or email. Once we start looking at your case, we will appoint a customer champion, who will be there to support you every step of the way.

  • Eligibility assessment

The BBRS has been established to resolve complaints between certain types of businesses and their banks. We can only look at your complaint if you meet certain criteria.

We also need to be sure that the person making the complaint is authorised to act on behalf of the customer. We will keep your eligibility under review as your case progresses through the BBRS process.

  • Case assembly

Your customer champion will work with you to identify information that could help resolve the complaint. They will provide guidance (but not legal advice) on what documents will be needed to support your case.

  • Case assessment

The BBRS uses different ways to help with your complaint. Our aim is to resolve complaints in a fair way and we may use different methods for different complaints. You can find out more about the different types of dispute resolution here.

  • Outcome

In many cases, complaints will be resolved without a need for the BBRS to make a binding decision. In others, a BBRS Case Assessor will look at the complaint and all relevant evidence to reach a decision to resolve it. This is known as “investigative adjudication”. Further information about this process is available here.

The BBRS will always do what is fair and reasonable in each individual case. This might mean that we uphold all parts of your complaint; only some parts of your complaint; or that we do not uphold any of it.

Regardless of the outcome, we will provide you with a decision and you will then be asked to accept or decline it. If you decide not to accept the decision, you are still able to take legal action if you so choose.

These have previously been referred to as 'Boundary' cases
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