Complaints Procedure

Treating Clients Fairly

At Skipton Business Finance we are committed to maintaining transparent business practices and at all times to act with honesty and integrity. However, we are aware that sometimes we get things wrong and this procedure has been drafted to deal with all formal complaints from:

1) A client

2) A prospective client

3) A debtor of our client

In the event that we receive a written complaint, it will be entered into our complaint register which will record the details of the complaint and enable Skipton Business Finance to track the progress of the complaint through to resolution. Our aim is to reach a mutual and acceptable agreement.

What We Will Do

The Complaint will be read and considered by an appropriate manager. We will acknowledge the complaint within 48 business hours of receipt. 

However, we may need to carry out further internal investigations. If these are required we will send you a notice of investigation letter within 10 working days from when we receive the complaint. 

The notice of investigation letter will include:

  • An explanation of why a different person is responding if it is not the person you addressed your complaint to;
  • The name and job title of the individual handling your complaint;
  • A time-scale for when we will correspond further which will be no more than 4 weeks from the receipt of your complaint;

In the unlikely event that our investigations require longer than 4 weeks to complete, we will write to you to explain why we are not in a position to respond to your complaint and indicate when we will make further contact (this must be within 8 weeks of receipt of the complaint).

If after 8 weeks we are still not in a position to make a response, we will write to you and provide reasons for the delay and an indication when we expect to provide a full and final response.

At this point we will include details of the services provided by UK Finance who can refer your complaint to if you wish providing your business meets the following criteria:

  • You were a client of a UK Finance member at the time of the complaint;
  • Your turnover does not exceed £6.5m; 
  • Your complaint relates to Factoring, Invoice Discounting and / or Asset Based Lending;
  • The complaint relates to actions that have occurred after 1st July 2013. 

Once our investigations are complete, we will write to you with our response. This will either be a final response or an offer letter (depending on the circumstances of the complaint). 

A final response is:

  • Where we believe we have fully addressed your complaint;
  • Notified you that you may refer the complaint to the services provided by UK Finance if you remain dissatisfied with our final response (subject to the conditions noted above).

An offer letter is:

Where we consider that you are entitled to some redress and believe that we have fully addressed your complaint. This will include a page for you to state your acceptance and return to us. We will then forward the agreed redress in a final response letter. 

We will consider a complaint closed when:

  • We have sent you a final response;
  • You have indicated in writing that you accept our offer or response or;
  • You fail to respond to our correspondence within 8 weeks from the date of our written response.

For Your Information

We will formally report on a six monthly basis to UK Finance the number of type of complaints we have received and when these complaints have been closed. The reporting periods are 1 January – 30 June and 1 July – 31 December.

Contact Details 

You can contact us in writing: Skipton Business Finance Ltd The Bailey Skipton BD23 1DN

You can contact CEDR at: 100 St. Paul's Churchyard London EC4M 8BU 

Tel: 020 7536 6000 Website: https://www.cedr.com/