Enquiries and Complaints

We can help by answering your questions, following up with your enquiry, investigating your complaint, or guiding you in the right direction.

Make an Enquiry or Complaint

How to make an enquiry or complaint

You can:

Our office hours are 8.30am to 5.00pm Monday to Friday. 

We can arrange an interpreter by telephone and for the hearing impaired and deaf we use the NZ Relay Service. We have information available about the IFSO Scheme in 7 languages. 

Our step-by-step complaints process

Illustrated complaints process
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  1. Make a complaint to your provider
    • First, it’s important to make sure your provider knows that you have a complaint. We’re happy to help with this. Fill out our online complaint form and tick the box asking us to send it to your provider.
    • We can only consider complaints about financial service providers who are Participants of the IFSO Scheme. Check if your insurer or financial service provider is a Participant using our "Find a Participant" search below.
    • If you need any help, such as an interpreter or help with the form, get in touch on 0800 888 202 or info@ifso.nz
  2. Your provider has to try to resolve the problem first
    • We have to give your provider a chance to resolve your complaint first. With your permission, we will ask them to contact you and try to resolve your complaint. Or, if you’ve already made a complaint to them, we’ll follow up to check what’s happening with it.  In our experience, about 90% of cases that come to us get resolved by the provider, meaning you might not need to use our service at all. 
    • Your provider has 2 months to resolve your complaint, but many complaints are resolved sooner than this. We’ll continue to support you throughout the process and make sure your complaint is taken seriously. 
    • Sometimes a complaint can take a bit longer to be resolved, or your provider might be unable to resolve it, which is called “deadlock”. If your complaint has reached “deadlock”, or if it hasn’t been resolved after 2 months, let us know. 
  3. We’ll investigate your complaint, for free
    • If your complaint is something we can consider, we’ll investigate all the facts to understand what happened and what went wrong.
    • We are neutral, we do not take sides. If possible, we will help you and your provider reach agreement. If that isn’t possible, we will make a decision taking into account what is fair and reasonable including the contract or policy, and the law.

    Make an enquiry or complaint

Find a Participant

We can only consider complaints about financial service providers who are Participants of the IFSO Scheme. Check if your insurer or financial service provider is a Participant by searching here.

If your insurer or financial service provider is not listed here, they are likely registered with another dispute resolution scheme. To find out which dispute resolution scheme your provider belongs to, you can:

Frequently asked questions (FAQs)

We have Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs) about our dispute resolution service. If your question is not answered in this section, or if you are unsure about anything just call us on 0800 888 202 or email us info@ifso.nz

For frequently asked questions for specific areas in financial services go to our tips and cases section or click on these links and scroll down to the FAQ section: vehicle insurance, home and contents insurance, health insurance, life insurance, Financial Advice Providers and financial advisers, loans and credit, superannuation including KiwiSaver and investments.

Privacy policy

The IFSO Scheme's Privacy Policy ensures all personal information is managed in accordance with the Privacy Act 2020.

If you have made a complaint to the IFSO Scheme we will collect personal information from you to assist the full and fair investigation of complaints. We can also collect information from your insurer, financial service provider or a third party if you authorise us to do so.

Download our privacy policy

The IFSO Scheme service charter

The IFSO Scheme’s Service Charter sets out what you can expect of our free service as a customer of an IFSO Scheme financial service provider, and our expectations about how you will engage with us during our complaint resolution process.

Download our Service Charter

Participant obligations to their customers

Participants of the IFSO Scheme have obligations to their clients and customers.

Complaints about the IFSO Scheme

If you are not satisfied with an aspect of our service or our process, you are able to make a service complaint about the IFSO Scheme by emailing info@ifso.nz. Just tell us what the issue is and what you want to happen. If you need any help, please call us on 0800 888 202.

Service complaints are about the service we provided. They are not a review of a complaint decision or outcome.

We will respond to your service complaint as quickly as possible. if we need to get specialist advice or make further enquiries, it may take more time. We will let you know the timeframe to expect.

Links to other organisations that may be able to help you including; consumer help and community organisations, government agencies, financial sector Codes of Conduct, other dispute resolution schemes and, industry and professional bodies.

Tips & cases

Complaints contain valuable information about when and how things go wrong. By sharing tips & cases about common issues, we aim to help more things go right.