RBI introduces Ombudsman Scheme for NBFCs

As announced in its Monetary Policy Statement on February 7, India's central bank, Reserve Bank of India (RBI), on Friday launched the Ombudsman Scheme for Non-Banking Financial Companies (NBFCs).

The scheme will provide a cost-free and expeditious complaint redressal mechanism relating to deficiency in the services by NBFCs.

It has been introduced with the object of enabling resolution of complaints free of cost, relating to certain aspects of services rendered by certain categories of NBFCs registered with the RBI, to facilitate the satisfaction or settlement of such complaints, and matters connected therewith.

Further, the offices of the NBFC Ombudsmen will function at four metro centres, namely, Chennai, Kolkata, Mumbai and New Delhi, and will handle complaints of customers in the respective zones.

The scheme will cover all deposit-taking NBFCs, and based on the experience gained, the RBI would extend the scheme to cover NBFCs having an asset size of Rs. one billion and above with customer interface.

However, the Non-banking Financial Company - Infrastructure Finance Company (NBFC-IFC), Core Investment Company (CIC), Infrastructure Debt Fund - Non banking Financial Company (IDF-NBFC) and an NBFC under liquidation, are excluded from the ambit of the scheme.

The scheme shall come into effect and force from February 23, 2018, RBI said in a statement.