FSMA · Belgium

Ombudsfin: Belgian financial complaints and the 2026 reform

Fintech Passport

September 13, 2026 · 11-min read

Ombudsfin: Belgian financial complaints and the 2026 reform

Belgium routes financial complaints to a single named ombudsman, and on 3 January 2026 the statute behind it was rewritten. Ombudsfin — the Ombudsman in financial disputes — is the out-of-court channel for disputes between customers and Belgian financial institutions, and its competence is set by Article 128/1, §2 of the Law of 2 August 2002 on the supervision of the financial sector and on financial services. Electronic money institutions and payment institutions are named categories in that list, so a firm passporting a payments product into Belgium is inside the perimeter whether or not it has thought about it. This piece sets out who does what, what the Law of 11 December 2025 changed, how the procedure actually runs, and three worked cases.

1. Who does what in Belgium

Four bodies matter, and they do not overlap in the way newcomers expect. The conduct supervisor does not resolve your customer’s dispute, and the ombudsman does not sanction you.

FSMA — the Financial Services and Markets Authority: the conduct supervisor. It receives complaints, assesses them as a supervisor and takes action where it considers action warranted. It does not award redress to an individual customer.
NBB — the National Bank of Belgium: the prudential supervisor for credit institutions, payment institutions and electronic money institutions, and the counterpart for prudential and statistical reporting.
Ombudsfin — the recognised out-of-court dispute body for financial services. This is where an unresolved customer dispute lands.
The Consumer Mediation Service — the federal body at the FPS Economy that receives consumer disputes generally and routes them to the qualified sectoral body; it is also the entry point behind the Belmed online platform.

The practical consequence for a payments firm is that a single unhappy customer can generate three separate files — an Ombudsfin case, an FSMA complaint and, if the customer used the general route, a referral from the Consumer Mediation Service — describing the same facts to three readerships. They are not duplicates to be merged. They are three audiences with different powers, and the one that can order you to pay is not the supervisor.

2. Legal basis

Law of 2 August 2002 on the supervision of the financial sector and on financial services — Article 128/1, §2 carries the list of institutions whose disputes Ombudsfin handles.
Law of 11 December 2025, implementing Regulation (EU) 2023/1114 (MiCA) and Regulation (EU) 2023/1113 (the transfer-of-funds regulation) in Belgian law. It was published in the Moniteur belge on 24 December 2025 and entered into force on 3 January 2026. Alongside the crypto framework it reinstated Chapter VI of the 2002 Law and inserted new provisions at Articles 128/2, 128/4, 128/5 and 147.
Book XVI of the Code of Economic Law — the general Belgian framework for out-of-court settlement of consumer disputes, under which qualified entities are recognised and the Consumer Mediation Service operates.
The European Commission’s public list of recognised alternative dispute resolution bodies, where the Belgian financial entry records the procedure’s characteristics: written procedure, non-binding outcome, free of charge for consumers, conducted in Dutch and French.

3. What changed on 3 January 2026

The reform is easy to miss because it arrived inside a crypto-assets statute. Three changes have operational consequences for an authorised payments or e-money firm.

Affiliation became a direct, individual obligation. Article 128/4 requires the institutions covered by the Law to be affiliated to the service in their own name. Membership through a sector body or a parent is not the same thing as being on the list, and the list itself is drafted open-endedly — it extends to any other person or entity active in the financial sector whose disputes must be capable of out-of-court settlement under applicable rules. Crypto-asset service providers were brought in on the same basis and contribute to the funding of the service.

The prior-internal-complaint condition was loosened. Article 128/5 removed the requirement that a complainant must first have gone through the institution’s own complaints service before the ombudsman may take the case. Ombudsfin still asks complainants to raise the matter with the institution first, and may refer a file back for an internal answer — but the firm can no longer rely on “they never complained to us” as a jurisdictional objection. In practice this shortens the time between a customer’s frustration and a regulator-visible case file.

Governance was rebuilt and wired to the supervisor. The service now has a statutory structure — an ombudsman, a supervisory board with representation from the FSMA and the FPS Economy, a board of directors and a general assembly — and Article 128/2 allows information to flow to the FSMA. That is the change most worth explaining internally: a pattern of Ombudsfin cases is now, by design, a channel through which the conduct supervisor forms a view of your firm.

4. The procedure, step by step

The shape is fixed, written and comparatively fast by ADR standards.

Stage	What happens	Timing
Filing	The customer submits in writing — standard form on the Ombudsfin site, e-mail or letter. A receipt is issued.	—
Admissibility	An initial examination tests the file against the admissibility criteria before anyone looks at the merits.	First step
Investigation	An adviser takes the file, contacts the institution, asks both sides for further information and brings them together to negotiate.	Within the handling period
Outcome	A written report is sent to each party. It is not binding.	End of the period
Handling period	90 calendar days in principle, extendable by the same period where the case is complex.	90 + 90

The published grounds for refusing a file are equally concrete: the consumer did not contact the trader first, the complaint is frivolous or vexatious, the matter is already before another body or a court, the submission is out of time, or handling it would seriously affect the operation of the service. Note the first ground sits alongside the statutory change described above — the service can still decline on that basis as a matter of its own practice, which is why the safe assumption is that a well-run internal procedure still matters, rather than that it has become optional.

One more structural point: the institution must designate a person internally who is responsible for handling complaints. That is a named contact, not a shared mailbox, and it is the address through which the adviser will chase you inside a 90-day clock.

5. Worked example — a blocked account at a passporting EMI

Facts: an electronic money institution authorised in another Member State and passporting into Belgium freezes a Belgian retail customer’s account during a fraud review. The customer e-mails support twice, receives an automated reply, and files with Ombudsfin eleven days later claiming €2,400 of blocked salary and two failed direct debits.

Which rule applies: electronic money institutions are a named category under Article 128/1, §2, so the subject matter is within competence. Since 3 January 2026 the thin internal-complaint history is not a jurisdictional defence. The clock that now matters is the 90 calendar days, running from the service’s side, not yours.

What the practitioner does: the complaints officer assembles a response file that answers the adviser’s actual question — not “was the block lawful” but “was it proportionate, documented and communicated”. That means the alert that triggered the review, the decision record naming who authorised the freeze, the customer communications log with timestamps, and the date the funds were released. Where a direct debit failed because of the freeze, the firm calculates the consequential cost rather than waiting to be asked.

Outcome: the report is non-binding, so nothing compels payment. That is the wrong way to read it. A written finding that a firm blocked a salary account for nineteen days with no documented decision and no substantive customer contact is a document that exists, sits with a supervisory board on which the FSMA is represented, and will be the second such document if there was a first. The commercial answer — release, compensate the direct-debit fees, close the file — is almost always cheaper than the paper trail.

6. Worked example — a crypto dispute in the first year of the new regime

Facts: a firm authorised as a crypto-asset service provider under MiCA, with a Belgian retail user base, receives an Ombudsfin file in mid-2026 about a transfer sent to a wrong address after a user-interface confusion. The firm’s compliance team believes ADR does not apply because it is not a bank.

Which rule applies: the Law of 11 December 2025 is the very statute that brought crypto-asset service providers inside the ombudsman’s perimeter and required them to affiliate and contribute to funding. The belief is not just wrong, it is wrong because of the law that authorised them.

What the practitioner does: first, checks affiliation status rather than assuming it — affiliation is individual, and a firm that took its Belgian passport before January 2026 may never have been asked. Second, treats the interface question as the substance of the case: the adviser will want the screens as the user saw them, any warning shown before confirmation, and what the firm’s own records show about address validation. Third, logs the case in the conduct register with the crypto product tagged separately, because the first year of a new perimeter is exactly when a pattern becomes a supervisory theme.

Outcome: the useful deliverable is rarely the individual settlement. It is the interface change — an address-confirmation step, or a first-transfer-to-a-new-address hold — that stops the second and third case. ADR volume is a product-design signal before it is a legal cost.

7. Worked example — where the firm is not established in Belgium

Facts: a Belgian consumer complains about a payment account provided under freedom of services by a firm established in another Member State, with no Belgian branch. The customer files with the Consumer Mediation Service, which routes the matter onward.

Which rule applies: Belgium’s architecture separates the general consumer entry point from the recognised sectoral body, so a financial file will be pointed at the financial ombudsman. Where the firm is established in another Member State, the Commission’s public list of recognised ADR bodies is the instrument that identifies which national body covers it — each Member State’s financial ADR entry records its sectors, languages, costs and whether outcomes bind.

What the practitioner does: maintains, per market served, a one-page record of the competent ADR body, the language of the procedure, the handling deadline and the named internal owner. For Belgium that is: Ombudsfin, Dutch and French, 90 calendar days extendable once, free to the consumer, written procedure, non-binding outcome. A firm that discovers these facts for the first time when a deadline letter arrives has already lost most of the response window.

Outcome: the avoidable failure here is linguistic, not legal. A procedure conducted in Dutch and French against a firm whose complaints team works only in English produces late, thin submissions on the merits — and lateness is the one thing every ADR body records identically.

FAQ

Are electronic money and payment institutions really in scope?

Yes. Both are named among the categories whose disputes Ombudsfin is competent to handle under Article 128/1, §2 of the Law of 2 August 2002, alongside credit institutions, investment firms, lenders and the various categories of intermediary.

Is affiliation to Ombudsfin optional?

No. Article 128/4, as inserted by the Law of 11 December 2025, requires direct individual affiliation for the institutions covered by the Law, and the covered list is open-ended. Crypto-asset service providers were brought in on the same footing and contribute to funding.

Is the ombudsman’s decision binding on the firm?

No. The outcome is a written report to both parties and is recorded as non-binding in the Commission’s list of recognised ADR bodies. The practical weight comes from the written record and from the information channel to the FSMA under Article 128/2.

How long does a case take?

In principle 90 calendar days from admissibility, extendable by the same period where the complexity of the file requires it.

Does the customer have to complain to us first?

Since 3 January 2026 that is no longer a statutory precondition — Article 128/5 removed it, though the service may still refer a file back for an internal answer, and “the consumer did not contact the trader first” remains among the published grounds for refusing a file. Treat the internal procedure as commercially essential rather than as a jurisdictional shield.

What languages does the procedure run in?

Dutch and French are both accepted for the complaint and for the proceedings.

What to do, today

Verify affiliation in your own name. Not the group’s, not a federation’s. If the firm passported into Belgium before January 2026 and nobody has checked since, this is a five-minute task with a statutory answer.
Name the responsible person. The designated internal complaints contact is an obligation of membership and the address a 90-day clock runs against. Put a deputy behind them.
Re-baseline the internal deadline. With the prior-complaint condition gone, the internal procedure has to beat the customer’s patience, not a legal test. Measure time-to-substantive-reply, not time-to-acknowledgement.
Build the Belgium page of the ADR map: body, languages, 90 + 90 days, free to consumer, written, non-binding, FSMA information channel. Repeat it for every market you serve.
Report ADR volume upward monthly. The supervisory board includes the conduct supervisor. Your management information should see the pattern before the supervisor does.