More About SES and Consumer Complaints

The Consumer Complaints component of the State Examination System (SES) allows you to manage complaints from a consumer against a company under your supervision. This topic answers some of the Frequently Asked Questions about the Consumer Complaints component.

Is the Consumer Complaints application its own system within SES?

Yes, the Consumer Complaints component and the Supervisory Activity component of SES talk to each other and share data. For example, agencies can view the count of complaints within the scheduling module which provides a quick link to the company record where you can see the complaints details.

Is it possible to update or escalate a complaint into an investigation or an exam to the point where the complaint IRs get transferred into the SA record?

No, not currently. In SES, users may connect a complaint to a supervisory activity (exam or investigation) at the time the exam is set up, or later by editing the basic exam details.

If a complaint does find there is a violation of state or federal guidelines, will we be able to issue a letter / action to the company via the complaints system prior to closing the complaint?

As the functionality stands today, you could potentially send the letter through the information request feature and ask the company to acknowledge receipt of the letter by responding back to your information request. Otherwise, this will need to be done outside of the system.

What does it mean to be assigned a Consumer Complaints role?

The Consumer Complaints role is a permission that allows users to view or manage complaints in SES. As of the latest system release (2021-08-21), users who exclusively use SES Complaints only need to be assigned a Consumer Complaints role. They do not need to be assigned a supervisory activity role. A single user can only hold one Consumer Complaints role. Below is a summary of the Complaint roles:

Table 1. SES Consumer Complaints Roles for Agency UsersThe Consumer Complaints role is a permission that allows users to view or manage complaints in SES. This table is a summary of the complaints roles for agency users as of the latest system release (8/21/21).
Role Complaint Supervisor Complaint Manager Complaint Viewer
Description Has all permissions and receives all notifications for all complaints. Responsible for accepting or rejecting complaint access requests from other agencies. Has all permissions for all complaints except for the ability to accept or reject access requests to a complaint. Does not receive notifications from the Discussion Board when “All Agency” is tagged in a post. View-only access to all complaints. Does not receive any notifications and cannot take any actions.
The Update User Roals and Groups page

How do I access SES? Is this the same as the SES training environment?

The functionality for SES and the SES training environment is the exact same but the URLs are different. To login to the real or “production” environment, navigate to https://ses.nmls.org.

To prepare and practice what you learn in the SES Complaints Training program, navigate to the SES Training Environment at sso-training.nmls.org. Here you will use the login credentials found in this eBook.

Who is using SES?

See the SES Participation Map.

What are the advantages of the SES Consumer Complaints workflow?

The typical complaints workflow without SES
Typical consumer complaint workflow when using SES.

How can my agency best prepare for using SES Consumer Complaints?

See Getting Prepared for SES Consumer Complaints (PDF).