The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) on Friday announced an integrated ombudsman scheme to improve grievance redressal mechanism for bank customers. The scheme will be rolled out in June.
Currently, there are three separate ombudsman for banks, non-banking finance companies (NBFCs) and non-bank prepaid payment issuers (PPIs) that are wallets. These are operated by the RBI from 22 ombudsman offices located across the country.
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The RBI plans to integrate the three separate ombudsman under one centralised scheme to make the grievance redressal mechanism more efficient and simpler.
“To make the ombudsman mechanism simpler, efficient and more responsive, it has been decided to integrate the three Ombudsman schemes and introduce centralised processing of grievances following a ‘One Nation One Ombudsman’ approach. This is intended to make the process of redress of grievances easier by enabling the customers to register their complaints under the integrated scheme, with one centralised reference point,” said RBI governor Shaktikanta Das said, while announcing the policy decision of the Monetary Policy Committee.
In January, the RBI had released framework for strengthening the grievance redress mechanism in banks.
According to this framework, there would be regulations which will require banks to provide enhanced disclosure of complaints and pay for the cost of redressal in case the complaints are higher than the peer group etc.
The redressal will continue to be cost-free for customers of banks and members of the public.
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