About 60% were settled informally, while compensation awards totalled £1.97m. – although the report noted that actual settlements were ‘a multiple of this figure’ because many agreements remain confidential.
It mediated a result in 55% of complaints and imposed a determination in 36% of cases which were pursued.
Banking disputes dominated the watchdog’s workload, making up 64% of all complaints. Around 14% of cases involved customers having accounts frozen or closed, often without clear explanations from banks. The report criticised delays and poor communication by some banks, warning that customers were sometimes left in limbo ‘even when the customer had done nothing wrong’.
Complaints against insurance companies, which dominate the Guernsey market, continued to fall. Cifo said that this was because insurers and brokers were getting better at communicating with their customers and sorting out problems earlier.
‘Our main observation is that when businesses do this, their customers feel better supported and fewer complaints arise,’ it said. ‘This positive trend demonstrates the value of the effective working relationships that many brokers and insurers have built up with us in recent years.’
Cifo CEO Douglas Melville said 2025 was 'an interesting year'.
‘Our case management work was heavily focused on complaints involving fraud and account blocks and closures, while complaint volumes involving insurance eased notably. On the operations side, complainant contacts with CIFO relating to service complaints and data subject access requests under data protection regulations consumed an increasing proportion of our staff capacity,' he said.
‘Our stakeholder engagement activities reflected all of these issues as well as emerging areas such as the introduction of lending and credit regulation in Jersey and the emerging attention paid to motor finance complaints in the UK, and more recently in the Channel Islands.’
The report also highlighted growing hostility towards the ombudsman itself.
Complaints challenging Cifo decisions and data subject access requests both increased sharply in 2025, with 91% of service complaints stemming directly from complainants disputing outcomes.
Board chairman Antony Townsend warned the organisation now faced a more complex risk environment driven partly by artificial intelligence and rising legal threats. He said the widespread adoption of artificial intelligence had contributed to higher volumes of data subject access requests, service complaints and threats of judicial review.
Despite the mounting pressures, the ombudsman insisted it remained committed to ‘fair, independent and expert complaint resolution’ across the Channel Islands’ financial sector.
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