Amid a number complaints from consumers against banks and digital payments platforms, the Reserve Bank of India on Friday announced to roll out an Integrated Ombudsman Scheme for banks, NBFCs and digital transactions in June 2021. The aim is to simplify the process of redress of grievances easier, Das said.
Following the global initiatives on consumer protection, the banking regulator took various initiatives to strengthen the grievance redress mechanism of regulated entities.
At present, there are three Ombudsman schemes in India (i) Banking Ombudsman Scheme (ii) Ombudsman Scheme for Non-Banking Financial Companies and (iii) Ombudsman Scheme for Digital Transactions. Over 20 ombudsman offices of the Reserve Bank of India work on consumers grievance redressal process across the country.
“RBI had operationalised also complaint management system (CMS) portal as one stop solution for alternate dispute resolution of customer complaints not resolved satisfactorily by the regulated entities,” the banking regulator said in a statement.
“To make the alternate dispute redress mechanism simpler and more responsive to the customers of regulated entities, it has been decided to implement, inter alia, integration of the three Ombudsman schemes and adoption of the ‘One Nation One Ombudsman’ approach for grievance redressal,” he further added.
The customers of banks, NBFCs and non-bank issuers of Prepaid Payment Instruments s will soon be able to register their complaints under the integrated scheme, with one centralised reference point.
RBI also proposed to set up a 24×7 helpline for addressing customer queries in respect of various digital payment products. “The helpline will, in addition to building trust and confidence, also reduce expenditure on both financial and human resources, otherwise incurred for addressing queries and grievances,” the banking regulator said