OMBUD COUNCIL ANNUAL REPORT 2024/25

PART B: PERFORMANCE INFORMATION

1. EXTERNAL AUDITOR’S REPORT: PREDETERMINED OBJECTIVES

Refer to the Financial Statements in Part F.

2. SITUATIONAL ANALYSIS

2.1 SERVICE DELIVERY ENVIRONMENT Alongside the need for internal focus on capacity building, the Ombud Council successfully delivered several key elements of its statutory mandate. In so doing, good progress was made in enhancing public access to an increasingly effective ombud system. 2.1.1 SERVICE DELIVERY HIGHLIGHTS: Key achievements during the reporting period include: ● Promoting consumer awareness of the ombud system. In line with our responsibility to promote awareness of and publicise the ombud system, and in this way support financial inclusion, the Ombud Council made meaningful progress in implementing financial education and consumer awareness initiatives. This included developing and funding a multi-phase, multi-media advertising campaign for the financial sector ombud system and the ombud schemes (including creating awareness of the new amalgamated National Financial Ombud (NFO) Scheme). The campaign comprised online digital media communications, advertisements in national and community publications, radio interviews, and airport and outdoor digital billboards raising public awareness of the ombud schemes. Other awareness activities included several webinars, presentations, lectures, newsletter inserts, participation in the Money Smart Week South Africa initiative, and outreach programmes. The Ombud Council’s approach to this part of our mandate is to partner with the consumer education initiatives of the FSCA, the ombud schemes and other stakeholders, through a collaborative business model developed for the Ombud Council by the Government Technical Advisory Centre (GTAC).

● Effective implementation of the National Financial Ombud (NFO) Scheme. After granting recognition in March 2024 to the NFO Scheme, which is an amalgamation of the former industry ombud schemes for the banking, credit, long-term and short-term insurance sectors, the Council has supported the NFO through its first year of operations, exercised oversight over its complaint handling functions, and ensured the scheme conducted a one-year review of the effectiveness of its governing rules. The establishment and successful implementation of the NFO marks an important milestone in the reform and consolidation of the financial sector ombud system. Financial customers who have been unfairly treated by banks, life and non-life insurers, and credit providers have begun enjoying the benefits of a significantly simpler, more streamlined, and more easily accessible process for having their complaints heard. The smooth implementation of the amalgamated scheme delivers on the Ombud Council’s statutory responsibility to promote co-operation between, and co-ordination of the activities of ombuds; and to resolve overlaps of the jurisdictional coverage of different ombud schemes. It also advances the National Treasury’s policy objective of simplifying and streamlining the ombud system. A comprehensive complaint data reporting framework was finalised, setting out consistent and comparable reporting requirements across the ombud schemes. The NFO industry scheme commenced reporting substantially in line with the framework in the first quarter of 2024/25. The two statutory schemes will formally adopt the reporting framework from the first quarter of 2025/26, although the FAIS Ombud has already commenced reporting ● Streamlined complaint information reporting by ombud schemes.

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OMBUD COUNCIL ANNUAL REPORT 2024/25