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The banking regulator has hit out at the Maharashtra Government for initiating criminal proceedings against bank officials for allegedly failing to meet farm loan targets.
Questioning the State Government’s action, RBI Deputy Governor SS Mundra said that the RBI is a competent regulator to deal with the banks. He added that banks were doing good work in giving credit to farmers in the last two years. “Moreover, even if some direction is to be given to the banks, these directions should be done through a proper channel and I think regulators are better equipped to do that.
“If each administrative authority decides to give direction then the sanity of the direction itself would be compromised,” Mundra said on the sidelines of an event organised by the Banking Codes and Standard Board of India (BCSBI).
Customer serviceMundra also highlighted that customer service must not be taken only as a compliance issue.
RBI has suggested that banks form a charter of customer rights and that banks should appoint a chief customer service officer, popularly known as banking ombudsman.
“Soon, we will be issuing the operational guidelines on how these people are going to appointed,” Mundra said.
He pointed out that last year under the office of Banking Ombudsman, RBI received around 85,000 complaints. The single largest segment of complaint, he said, was non-compliance with BCSBI code which was 29 per cent of the total. The second was ATM, debit card and credit card which stood at around 21 per cent.
“So, these are the areas which need to be looked into. Our sense is that even the complaints which are coming either they are from e-savvy customers or mostly from the urban and metro areas.
“The customers in rural and semi-urban area probably may be the silent sufferers,” he said, adding that during the year, RBI intends to hold some proactive camps in semi-urban areas, essentially to get the feedback from the people and ascertain the difficulties they are facing.
“The bank should create the capability of aggregating the complaints and doing the root-cause analysis,” Mundra added.
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