Not upheld: Service failures generally complaint against Computershare Investor Services Plc

Decision detail

Summary

Mrs R complained that Computershare Investor Services Plc failed to communicate with her regarding her options to purchase shares through a share save scheme after it became the scheme administrator in July 2025. Following her redundancy in March 2025, she had six months to exercise her share purchase option, but her options lapsed on 3 September 2025 before she contacted Computershare in late September. Mrs R had expected to be contacted approximately six weeks before the expiry date based on communications with the previous administrator, but Computershare only sent a welcome email on 28 July 2025 which was filtered to her spam folder. The ombudsman found that Computershare was not at fault for the email being filtered to spam, was not responsible for the previous administrator's promises, and had provided sufficient communication through the email sent to her registered address. The complaint was not upheld.

The Ombudsman's reasoning

The ombudsman found that while Mrs R had expected to be contacted by the scheme administrator based on conversations with the previous administrator, Computershare could not be held responsible for promises made by a third party. Although the email was filtered to spam, Computershare was not at fault for this technical issue. The ombudsman acknowledged that additional postal communication might have been helpful, but did not find this was necessary to constitute fair communication. The ombudsman noted that Mrs R did not attempt to contact the scheme administrator or access her account during the six-month period, despite having received emails from Computershare.

How this compares

Source

Read the original decision on the Financial Ombudsman Service website