Banking ombudsman of the Reserve Bank of India for Jharkhand and Bihar has expressed concerns over lesser number of complaints coming from customers before it.
Though the number of grievances received at the regulatory bank has shown increase of nearly 16 per cent over the previous year, just 1063 came from Jharkhand.
"Our annual report for the year 2014-15 shows that the office of banking ombudsman for the bank branches operating in Bihar and Jharkhand received 4456 complaints against 3845 in 2013-14 which is 15.9 per cent higher. Out of these, 3134 complaints were received from Bihar, 1063 from Jharkhand and 259 from other sources. But getting just 1063 from the State is worrying sign and I think poor financial literacy and penetration of banking services among masses are the reason behind," said Smita Chandramani Kumar, Banking Ombudsman, Patna while addressing a press conference on Monday.
The report suggests that against Bihar's rise of 22.13 per cent in comparison of 2013-14 Jharkhand has shown a dismal growth on just 0.95 per cent during 2014-15. "We need to focus more on awareness fronts so that more and more bank account holders come and register their complaints relating to service delivery mechanism, loan sanction, ATM related cases, unauthorised or wrong transactions etc. We may go for radio based awareness drive to reach more people," she added.
large number of complaints related to pension problems, arrears, ATM transactions has featured in the tally whereas cases of online fraud and credit card transactions are also catching up fast. The ombudsman has against 4456 complaints received, disposed of 4406. Moreover, 2063 or 46.8 per cent of those have been classified as non-maintainable and rejected.
RBI in order to increase confidence has also directed all the banks to setup internal ombudsman for grievance redressal. "We are getting cases about online transactions and have issued some guidelines like SMS alert, 3D authentication and OTP verification. But I also admit that there are lots of gap in the customer services with the banks," added the Ombudsman.
Also present on the occasion was RBI General Manager Patric Barla who talked about customer rights. "The RBI has issued a charter of customer rights which talks about fair and indiscriminate treatment for all, transparency related to products and services, their suitability to particular customer, privacy and grievance redressal. All the commercial banks have to work on these fronts," said Barla.