MANU/RPRL/0061/2016

Ministry : Reserve Bank of India

Department/Board : RBI

Press Release No. : 2015-2016/1939

Date : 16.02.2016

RBI to review Banks' Culture towards Customer Service

The Reserve Bank of India will soon undertake incognito visits to bank branches to check culture towards customer complaints in banks. It will also undertake a review of how banks have implemented Charter of Customer Rights.

This was stated by Dr. Raghuram G. Rajan, Governor, Reserve Bank of India. He was inaugurating the Annual Conference of Banking Ombudsmen 2016 held in Thiruvananthapuram on February 15-16, 2016. The Conference was attended by Managing Directors and Senior Executives of major Commercial Banks, Indian Banks' Association (IBA), Banking Codes and Standards Board of India (BCSBI), Banking Ombudsmen and heads of regulatory and supervisory departments of the Reserve Bank.

The Reserve Bank had put out a Charter of Customer Rights in public domain and asked banks to adapt and implement it after their Board's approval. The Governor impressed upon banks that the Grievance Redressal Mechanism must be integrated in the business operations of banks. Grievances are also an important input into regulatory and supervisory processes, he added.

"Customers must have the right to access banking services and to the grievance redressal machinery - to banks' internal mechanism for grievance redressal as well as the Banking Ombudsman Scheme of the Reserve Bank - so that they are not 'excluded' from the banking fold," he exhorted the banks. Websites, mobile phones, missed calls, physical places, and collection points could be some ways to aggregate customer complaints for redressal, he pointed out. High level of automation would not only allow customers to access the grievance redressal machinery at anytime from anywhere but also reduce the cost of grievance redressal.

Explaining the growing importance of customer awareness, customer protection and customer literacy, the Governor stated that a large segment of the population was not comfortable entering a bank even today. Moreover, only a fragment of the customer complaints came from rural areas. This clearly showed the urban bias and lack of awareness among the new entrants about customer grievance redressal processes. "We want the new entrant to be comfortable in asking not only for banking services but also about redressal of grievances," he exhorted bankers.

Referring to the complaints of mis-selling of third party products by banks, the Governor stated that the findings of some recent incognito visits undertaken by the Reserve Bank on sale of third party products by banks and a study........