SBI Tops in Service Lapses, 26 Percent Share in Total Complaints Filed With Banking Ombudsman 

Hyderabad: The Banking Ombudsman for Telangana and Andhra Pradesh received 5,910 complaints during the year that ended in June 2016, a 35.36 percent more compared to the previous year.

The break-up in the number of complaints from Andhra Pradesh and Telangana is 2,801 and 3,109 respectively. During 2014-15 (ending June 2015), the office in Hyderabad received a total of 4,366 complaints.

Complaints pertaining to ATM and debit and credit cards accounted for 25.5 percent of the cases in 2015-16. In the previous year, their share was 25.4 percent.

Giving details on Monday, the Banking Ombudsman N. Krishna Mohan said the sharp increase in the overall complaints ought to be seen in the backdrop of a rise in the number of bank customers as a result of Jan Dhan Yojana and insurance scheme-linked accounts. The rise in complaints could also be the result of they not being addressed at the branch level.

State Bank of India continued to account for the largest share of complaints, at 26.2 percent. SBI’s associate banks accounted for nine per cent, while SBI Cards accounted for 3.8 per cent of the total complaints during 2015-16. Nationalised banks as a group accounted for 27 percent of the complaints.

The number of complaints from metropolitan centres came down to 38 per cent in 2015-16 from 39 percent in the previous year. The share of complaints from urban centres, however, increased to 37 per cent (32 per cent), while 25 percent of complaints came from semi-urban and rural areas.

As many as 6,033 complaints, including 123 carried forward from the previous year, were examined by the office of the Banking Ombudsman in 2015-16. Of these, 5,696 (94.41 per cent) were closed under various provisions of the Banking Ombudsman Scheme, 2006. A total of 1,174 complaints (21 percent) were found to be non-maintainable. Of the maintainable complaints, 22 percent were resolved through mediation and conciliation under the Scheme, the release said.