Under our rules, we have the discretion not to consider complaints that we believe involve a firm’s ‘legitimate exercise’ of its ‘commercial judgement’.

In practice, this means we do not normally look into complaints about matters such as a firm’s decision to refuse cover, increase premiums or apply special conditions unless we think the firm’s decision wasn’t just a question of legitimate commercial discretion.

This might be the case if, for example, the decision appears to have been the result of maladministration, where the insurer may be breaking the law on race, disability or sex discrimination, or where there is other evidence (like an industry code or agreement) that suggests the insurer should not have acted as it did.

The last in our 2003 series of working together conferences took place in Manchester on 10 December. We’ve had very positive feedback from this, and from all the events we organised last year, and we are now busy planning the programme for 2004.

We will probably be holding the conferences towards the later part of the year – so that in the spring we can focus on smaller-scale events at different venues around the country. These smaller-scale events will be more tailored towards smaller firms – including mortgage and insurance intermediaries who will soon be coming under the ombudsman’s jurisdiction for the first time.

Watch this space for more details ...