Banking Ombudsman to take up more outreach programmes

The Office of Banking Ombudsman would undertake one outreach programme every month in semi-urban and rural areas as part of creating more awareness on financial literacy, an official said today.
"Out of the total 8,285 complaints we received in the period 2014-15, 64 per cent of them are from urban areas. In order to create more awareness, we will be conducting more outreach programme in next one year", Banking Ombudsman S Raja told reporters here.
Noting that the Banking Ombudsman office has been undertaking such awareness programme in the past through means of issuing pamphlets also through India Post, he said, "we have decided that one outreach programme preferably in a semi-urban area will be conducted every month".

On the performance of the Banking Ombudsman office in the financial year 2014-15, he said the number of complaints (8,285) received were 5.56 per cent lesser compared to the previous year.
"The pendency ratio also decreased to 1.02 per cent from last year's 2.56 per cent".
Complaints against nationalised banks at 37.32 per cent topped the list with State Bank of India and its associate banks accounting for 27.17 per cent.
Complaints against new private sector banks stood at 19.54 per cent and foreign banks 5.24 per cent, he said.
The complaints related to failure to meet fair practices code (25.68 per cent), card related (22.44 per cent), and loans and advances (16.02 per cent), he said.