The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) on Wednesday, January 4, said it saw a 9.39 percent rise in the volume of complaints under various ombudsman schemes from April 1, 2021, to March 31, 2022, with digital modes of payment and transactions accounting for a bulk of the complaints.
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While releasing the Annual Report of the Ombudsman Schemes, the central bank said during the reported period, it received 4,18,184 complaints under the ombudsman schemes or consumer education and protection cells. Of these, 3,04,496 complaints were handled by the 22 offices of the RBI ombudsman, including the complaints received under the three erstwhile ombudsman schemes till November 11, 2021.
Since the establishment of the Centralised Receipt and Processing Centre (CRPC) under the RB-IOS, 2021, of the 149,419 complaints handled at the CRPC, 143,552 had been disposed of as of the end of March 31, 2022, the bank said. Coming to complaints related to digital modes of payment and transactions, the central bank said they constitute 42.12 percent of the total complaints received during the year.
The rate of disposal of complaints by RBIOS improved to 97.97 percent in 2021-22 from 96.59 percent in 2020-21 and the majority (63.63 percent) of the maintainable complaints were resolved through mutual settlement or conciliation, the apex bank said.
It said the annual report covers the activities under the erstwhile ombudsman schemes, namely Banking Ombudsman Scheme, 2006 (BOS), the Ombudsman Scheme for Non-Banking Financial Companies, 2018 (OSNBFC), and the Ombudsman Scheme for Digital Transactions, 2019 (OSDT).
Under the RBI-OS, 2021, following the 'One Nation, One Ombudsman' principle, the territorial jurisdictions for the ORBIOs have been abrogated, and complaints are assigned to all the ORBIOs by the CMS.
Grounds of complaint covered under the RBIOS have also been expanded to cover all complaints involving 'deficiency of service', which has been defined under the scheme, it said, adding the CMS was upgraded to align with the requirements under RB-IOS, 2021 to improve its overall efficiency.
The coverage of RBIOS was extended to include the non-scheduled Urban Cooperative Banks (UCBs) with a deposit size of Rs 50 crore or above as at the end of the previous Financial Year. Credit Information Companies (CICs) were brought under RBI-IOS with effect from September 1, 2022.
The Centralised Receipt and Processing Center (CRPC) at RBI, Chandigarh handled the preliminary scrutiny of the complaints received through email/physical mode (1,49,419 complaints) and closed 1,07,821 complaints as non-complaints/ non-maintainable complaints during the period.
Under the erstwhile three Schemes and the RB-IOS, it said, during the period April 1, 2021, to March 31, 2022, the total number of complaints received at the ORBIOs and the CRPC stood at 4,18,184, showing an increase of 9.39 percent over last year.
Of these, 3,04,496 complaints were handled by the 22 ORBIOs. The overall disposal rate for the year at the ORBIOs stood at 97.97 percent.
Talking about other developments during the year, the report said, a Nationwide Customer Satisfaction Survey to assess the satisfaction level of the complainants who had approached the RBIOs for redressal of their grievances was undertaken through a third-party agency, which indicated the overall satisfaction level of the complainants was at 59.55 percent.
The annual Root Cause Analysis for the year 2022 was conducted and necessary action was initiated based on the causes identified, it added.
First Published: Jan 4, 2023 6:27 PM IST
