We’re going to be Super-complainers! But what does that mean?

It’s not often you receive an email that you’ve been waiting on for two and a half years – but in January this year that’s exactly what happened. 

We heard that our application for super-complainant status to the UK’s competition regulator, made in June 2022, had been successful. Admittedly, it’s a less mainstream celebration than New Year’s Eve, but for me it was honestly my January highlight.

For those who are less familiar with the niche world of regulatory super-complaints, let me unpack why I was so excited…

In the UK, some markets that provide essential services we all rely on, like retail, banking, energy or telecoms, are overseen by a regulator. The regulator is the body responsible for making sure that the market functions well, and importantly that consumers are treated fairly and get good outcomes when they use it. 

But I think it’s fair to say that most people, day to day, don’t really know what a regulator is – and certainly wouldn’t think to go to one to complain if they felt they weren’t getting as good a service as other people. So regulators can feel a bit detached from real people and their lives.

That’s where super-complainants come in. Just as it sounds, it’s essentially a complaining superpower. But a superpower that you can get without having to be bitten by a radioactive spider.

A small number of trusted organisations have been designated by the government as responsible for raising concerns with regulators when consumers (or a particular group of consumers – like people with mental health problems) are getting poor outcomes from a particular market or service. 

For example, in 2018 Citizens Advice raised a super-complaint about the ‘loyalty penalty’ – where customers who are less able to shop around at the end of a mobile phone contract, insurance or mortgage term, are rolled automatically onto more expensive deals and pay high prices as a result. Following Citizens Advice’s complaint, the financial services regulator essentially banned the loyalty penalty in insurance and action is ongoing in other markets. So it really does make a difference.

In practice, super-complaints trigger a more formal process for a regulator to examine evidence of harm for a particular group of people – and if the evidence is strong enough, to take action to tackle it. So it’s another powerful tool in our toolkit to help break the link between money and mental health problems – bringing more fire power to our research.

Acquiring super-complainant status is a proud moment for Money and Mental Health. It’s a real mark of trust in our research and our ability to hear and respond to the concerns of people with mental health problems. 

We’re only the seventh organisation to be given this status to complain to the consumer regulator, and tiny alongside giants like Which?, Citizens Advice and Age UK. I’m proud that – at nearly nine years old – we’ve earnt this trusted status to stand alongside such historically impactful organisations.

Today a ‘Statutory Instrument’ is laid in Parliament officially adding our name to the list of designated super-complainants in the relevant piece of legislation. To be honest, the Parliamentary geek in me is also just pretty excited about the charity’s name being written in legislation. Assuming no MPs object over the coming weeks, this will come into force on 6 April – and we’ll be scoping out which issues in our research we would want to work up into a more formal super-complaint.

At the same time as applying to the Competition and Markets Authority, the regulator responsible for unfair trading and consumer protection, we applied for the same status to complain to the regulator responsible for UK Financial Services – the FCA. The formal process is a thorough one, and a change of government has delayed things, but we’re hoping to get an outcome to this application soon so that we can help to raise the bar for people with mental health problems across a wider range of essential services.

For today though, we’re taking a moment to celebrate – Money and Mental Health just grew up and we’re feeling pretty proud.