On the go: Prospective Pensions Ombudsman Dominic Harris has said he would look to improve customer satisfaction and the backlog that the ombudsman is currently facing, if appointed to the position.
CMS partner Harris, the preferred candidate for the role, outlined his future plans and predictions for the Pensions Ombudsman in a Work and Pensions Committee hearing on July 13.
Harris praised the departing Arter, but observed that the current backlog in cases exceeds Arter’s apparent target. “His aim is to have 10 per cent [of cases] that are over 12 months old, but he is almost at 30 per cent,” he said.
When asked how he felt about taking over from his predecessor, Harris said: “The starting point in my mind is that I’m going to be pretty evolutionary, rather than revolutionary. In all of this, I can’t imagine I’m going to tear up what comes out tomorrow and start again.”
On current satisfaction levels with the ombudsman, he added: “I understand it’s around 50-something per cent. Clearly, there’s going to be a lot of customers who are not satisfied because they are not getting the decision they want — that’s just the nature of being an ombudsman.
“What we can do is make sure the process is speedy, fair, plain English, so they know why they are not getting the decision they want.”
He continued: “We want to satisfy all the stakeholders in the organisation. Are we timely, efficient? Are we getting things right? Are we getting regularly appealed? All of that filters back to whether there’s a backlog or not.”
Harris predicted a tightening of the public purse and expects the ombudsman to have “fewer resources in the future”.
He also forecast that the ombudsman will receive more complaints, owing to an expected increase in economically stressed members “who might seek to make a transfer that’s pretty inadvisable, scams and so forth”.
“At the same time, you’ve got employers who aren’t making the profit they once were, and in the past, where profits were high if there was an overpayment on pension, quite often an employer would say ‘actually, don’t worry about that I’ll cover the cost, no need to recover the overpayment from members’ — employers are doing that less now,” Harris said.
When asked about the Pensions Dishonesty Unit, a new Pensions Ombudsman initiative launched in January that is currently running on a pilot basis, Harris admitted “it’s a pretty big departure from what the ombudsman used to do”, but concluded that “it’s a great idea”.
The CMS partner disclosed that he acts on behalf of “seven or eight clients at the moment, fairly big schemes”. He admitted “it's clearly a possibility that in two, three years’ time members may make complaints that may be based on advice I have given”.
Harris added that his wife sits on the board of seven pension schemes as an independent trustee, and he emphasised that he “wouldn't be making determinations in respect to those schemes”.
