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The Central Board of the Reserve Bank of India on Friday took stock of a nationwide survey among bank customers regarding banks’ grievance redress system and the functioning of ombudsman schemes.
To improve the efficacy of the internal grievance redress mechanism of banks and to provide better customer service, a comprehensive framework has been put in place comprising certain measures, according to RBI.
The measures include enhanced disclosures on customer complaints by the banks and the Reserve Bank, recovering the cost of complaints’ redress from banks when maintainable complaints are higher than their peer-group averages. intensive review of grievance redress mechanism, and supervisory/regulatory actions against banks that fail to improve their redress mechanism in a time bound manner.
Integrated ombudsman
The Banking Ombudsman Scheme (BOS), launched in 1995, has served as a flagship alternate grievance redress mechanism for the redress of customer complaints against banks received by the Reserve Bank.
Subsequently, the ombudsman scheme for NBFCs and the ombudsman scheme for digital transactions were launched in 2018 and 2019, respectively.
An in-house committee, set up to review the ombudsman framework and suggest measures to improve its efficacy, recommended convergence of the three ombudsman schemes into an integrated “Reserve Bank of India Ombudsman Scheme”, expanding the ambit of this scheme to all regulated entities presently not covered under the existing schemes to provide a single window for grievance redress.
Centralised processing
The committee also recommended setting up of a centralised receipt and processing centre for receipt and initial processing of complaints under the ‘One Nation - One Jurisdiction’ approach, reducing the turnaround time (TAT) for the redress of complaints, and introducing delegation by appointing a deputy ombudsman.
The Board, in its meeting, reviewed the current domestic and global economic situation and challenges. It deliberated on possible measures for addressing the emerging challenges.
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