CIO takes more action against credit repair companies

The Credit and Investments Ombudsman has added another credit repair company to its banned list. In February CIO said it had excluded two credit repair companies from using its services and last week it added another, as well as issuing warnings to a few others.

CIO said it had been approached by some financial services providers asking for the names of the excluded parties. It has decided not to disclose the names.

CIO said in a statement: "The fact that CIO has excluded a third party representative does not entitle a licensee to refuse to deal with the third party.

"In other words, the licensee must deal with any complaint made by a third party representative, whether or not the representative has been excluded by CIO."

CIO said the exclusion was not necessarily permanent.

The bans were made after the representatives were found to have obstructed CIO's dispute resolution process, had made "unreasonable decisions" on behalf of their clients and had "otherwise acted contrary to consumers' best interests."

The effect of the ban is that CIO will not discuss a complaint about a financial service provider with the credit repair companies. Affected consumers have been invited to deal directly with CIO.