The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) governor Sanjay Malhotra on Monday exhorted banks to provide services efficiently to customers and improve their grievance redressal. He said that a large number of customer grievances are getting escalated to the RBI Ombudsmen as they fail to be resolved satisfactorily by banks and NBFCs.
Mumbai: The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) governor Sanjay Malhotra on Monday exhorted banks to provide services efficiently to customers and improve their grievance redressal. He said that a large number of customer grievances are getting escalated to the RBI Ombudsmen as they fail to be resolved satisfactorily by banks and NBFCs.
Speaking at the Annual Conference of the RBI Ombudsmen, Malhotra said that the number of complaints received under RBI's Integrated
Ombudsman Scheme increased at a compounded average growth rate of almost 50 per cent per year over last two years to 9.34 lakh in
2023-24. The number of complaints processed at the Office of RBI Ombudsman increased by 25 per cent from about 2.35 lakh in 2022-23 to
almost 2.94 lakh in 2023-24.
“Not only are large number of complaints getting escalated, a large proportion of them – nearly 57 per cent of the maintainable complaints
last year – required mediation or formal intervention by the RBI Ombudsmen. You would all agree that this is a highly unsatisfactory situation and needs our urgent attention,” he said.
“When a consumer files a grievance – whether for a disputed transaction, a lapse in service, inappropriate pricing or charges or
an unfair practice – it is a signal that our system has fallen short. Left unresolved, such issues can erode consumer confidence and tarnish the entire ecosystem,” Malhotra warned.
He said that last year (2023-24), the 95 Scheduled Commercial Banks alone received over 10 million complaints from their customers and if
complaints received at other RBI-regulated entities (REs) are taken into account, the number would be even higher. “With the rapidly growing customer base and expanding suite of products, the number of complaints may grow, if we do not get our act together.”
Malhotra said that lenders are in the business of customer service and urged managing directors and chief executive officers, zonal and
regional managers and the branch managers to spend some time every week, if not every day on grievance redressal. He said that the effort
should be to not only resolve the complaints but also to ensure that the same type of complaint does not arise again. Many of the complaints like digital transaction disputes, unauthorized charges, or miscommunication frequently recur which are clear cut symptoms of underlying issues in the overall customer service framework of the regulated entities.
He also drew attention to the misclassification of complaints by banks/NBFCs as requests, queries, and disputes which results in the complainants’ grievances remaining unaddressed. Moreover, this is also a gross regulatory violation, he said.
He said that the central bank is in the process of reviewing the citizens charter to include all services with a timeline that it offers to regulated entities or directly to citizens.
