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The man who represents the last chance at justice for wronged investors is leaving at a time when business is booming.

Good on him. Bad on the investment industry.

"I think we've got a lot of work to do on the culture of complaint handling and dispute resolution in financial services," said David Agnew, Canada's Ombudsman for Banking Services and Investments. "There are some firms that have worked hard at it, but we also see some behaviour that really suggests to me they don't get it. It's the tactics of delay, it's the automatic no, it's the attitude of, 'Get this into the hands of legal and start the formal letters.'"

OBSI is where you go if you've lost money because of bad investment advice and the firm you deal with is doing the kind of stuff Mr. Agnew's talking about here. OBSI is an independent organization that charges nothing to investors and can recommend settlements for as much as $350,000. Think of OBSI as your final option if you haven't lost enough to make legal action worthwhile.

Mr. Agnew, a former civil servant, journalist, consultant and credit union executive, came to OBSI in August, 2005, and this is his last week on the job. His next position will be president of Toronto-based Seneca College, one of the country's largest community colleges. Asked to highlight his successes during his tenure at OBSI, Mr. Agnew mentioned the big growth in the number of investors using the service.

OBSI looked into 346 investing complaints last year (it also does banking), compared with 220 in 2007 and 159 in 2006. Another big increase is shaping up this year, Mr. Agnew said in a dig at this column's recent Q&A with a pair of lawyers who have handled roughly 100 cases on behalf of aggrieved investors.

"Jesus, a hundred cases? We opened 150 cases in the last three months. We're very busy. Literally, this year we're going to open about 600 investment cases."

Part of this can be explained by the way in which the bear market has exposed bad investment advice. Another explanation is the work OBSI has done to build relationships with regulators such as the Investment Industry Regulatory Organization of Canada and the Mutual Fund Dealers Association of Canada.

IIROC and the MFDA can discipline an adviser for improper behaviour, but they can't order compensation for wronged clients. That's where OBSI comes in. While it can only recommend that firms pay money to clients, it has been defied just once.

Investors should understand that using OBSI is no guarantee of being compensated for market losses. On average, the organization finds in the client's favour in one-third of the files it opens on investing matters.

This may help explain why some people see OBSI as being controlled by the investment industry and thus not a true ally of the individual investor. In fact, industry levies do pay for OBSI, but six positions on the organization's nine-person board of directors go to non-financial people.

In addition to its growing clientele, Mr. Agnew said he takes pride in the result of an external review of how well OBSI functions. The review was conducted by Phil Khoury, who has also studied the ombudsman offices in Australia.

"The memorable phrase that he started his summary with was that he found us to be a professional and effective ombudsman service," Mr. Agnew said.

Another accomplishment cited by Mr. Agnew was OBSI's role developing new rules in the investment industry for handling customer complaints. These rules, which are expected to take effect in the summer or fall, require firms to do a better job of explaining how to navigate the complaints system. They also will put a 90-day limit on how long firms can take to deal with complaints. OBSI itself has a goal of handling 80 per cent of its cases within 180 days.

One of Mr. Agnew's regrets is a decision by Royal Bank of Canada to bow out of the banking side of OBSI in favour of using an outside dispute resolution service. Investing complaints about the RBC family of companies are still being handled by OBSI.

Another regret is that the level of awareness of OBSI still falls short of where it should be. Mr. Agnew puts some of the blame on the investment industry.

A few years ago, OBSI did a survey of clients after their cases had been investigated and 50 per cent said they had not been told about the existence of an ombudsman's office. In 2008, that number rose to 61 per cent. "I would say there are thousands of people who should have had recourse to us, and they didn't for want of knowledge," Mr. Agnew said.

Challenge for the next OBSI chief: Raise the profile of the organization that offers the last chance at justice for wronged investors.

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