Dissatisfaction on rise among banking customers

The satisfaction level among the customers of the banks has declined drastically during the last financial year, reveals the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) data.

According to RBI, the total number of complaints against various banks to banking ombudsman (BO) jumped by 24.9% on an annual basis. The BOs across the country received 1,63,590 complaints in 2017-18, against 1,30,987 in the year preceding that.

Mobile banking and electronic banking-related complaints constituted 8,487 lodged with BOs during 2017-18. Prior to that, the central bank hadn’t received any complaints regarding mobile banking and electronic banking.

On the other hand, ATM-related complaints surged by 50.1% during the year to 24,672 in 2017-18 from 16,434 in 2016-17.

“During the year, non-observance of the fair practices code remained the major complaint against banks, followed by those related to ATM/credit/debit cards, failure to meet commitments and mobile banking,” the central bank said in its annual banking report.

The complaints regarding banks not following fair practices stood at 36,146 during 2017-18, 22% of the total complaints received by the central bank.

India’s largest bank – State Bank of India – constituted 28% of the dissatisfied bank customers. There were 46,994 complains received by the BOs against the bank. ATM and card related complaints from the bank, stood at 11,816 during the year – almost 52% of the total card related complaints received by banks.

The public sector banks shared the major pie of the customer complaints during the year as 21 PSBs faced 1.02 lakh complaints during the year.

The central bank said that 92% of the complaints were disposed of during the year. “97% of these complaints were disposed of the current year as compared to 92% in the previous year, reflecting improved efficiency of these offices”.