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  • MF News RBI worried about mis-selling by banks

    RBI worried about mis-selling by banks

    In FY 2016-17, the Office of Banking Ombudsmans (OBO) handled over 1.36 lakh complaints many of which related to third party sales.
    Padmaja Choudhury Dec 22, 2017

    RBI is worried about the growing instances of mis-selling of third party products such as mutual funds and insurance in banks.

    In fact, the former RBI Deputy Governor, SS Mundra is quoted in the annual report of Banking Ombudsman Scheme, 2016-17 that the underlying reasons for mis-selling in banks were the challenging targets set for employees, incentive linked quotas, lack of training and fast rotation of frontline staff. These along with the lack of co-ordination between  back  and  front  office,  impacted  customer  protection  and  made  it  inconvenient  for  the  complainants  to  easily  approach  the  appropriate  authorities  for  redressal.  He has urged  that  the  commitment  of  the  top  managements  of  banks  should  also  percolate  down  the  line  so  that  the  customers  received  efficient  services  as  well  as  due  care  at  all touch points. With regard to complaint management, he said that the banks should seek to study the  patterns  and  undertake  root  cause  analysis  of  complaints,  which  would  be  possible  by  adopting  end-to-end  automation  of  the  grievance  redressal  mechanism  and deployment  of  latest analytical tools, he added.

    The annual report shows that the Office of Banking Ombudsmans (OBO) handled over 1.36 lakh complaints of which 92% were disposed off within the year. Most complaints were related to unfair practices including third party sales of financial products.

    PSUs accounted for 62% of the total complaints out of which 27% complaints were against SBI and associates.  On the other hand, complaints against private banks had risen during the last three years to 26.5% while foreign banks accounted for 2.5% of complaints received.

    These complaints include unsuitable sale of third party financial products, non-transparency and lack of adequate transparency in sale, non-disclosure of grievance redressal mechanism available and delay or refusal to facilitate after sales service by banks.

    The report also mentioned few instances of mis-selling relating to fixed deposits and insurance by banks.

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    9 Comments
    Hardik Shah · 6 years ago `
    Banks people just sells MF and Insurance as target without knowing client's requirement. By showing full catchy picture and in this entire ifa channel suffer & target most.
    Srinivasan · 6 years ago `
    RBI has every power on Earth to put an end to Banks, it is only private Banks to stop cheating their customers. Instead it will be "worried" it will be "concerned" it "will warn that it would take severe action". This is a real mockery!. It should come out clean on this sort of issues. If the numbers of complaints,which are proved exceeds certain numbers say 100, RBI should ensure that the agency is withdrawn for 10 years.years,and the innocent victims are compensated.Then only this cheating would be put an end to
    Vikas Gupta · 6 years ago
    You are absolutely right that RBI has power to put an end to the misselling done by most of the banks but RBI don't take any action. There are clear cut proofs of misselling by banks like axis bank sells mostly the MFs of axis & SBI sells only the funds of SBI. Does every customer of these banks need only the schemes of a particular brand only? Secondly, NFOs always get a high subscription from the banks but after reopening of Open ended schemes, there is almost zero subscription in the same schemes by the same banks. Why?
    Reply
    DB DESAI · 6 years ago `
    The whole premise on which Banks, Auto dealers and other entities are allowed to sell financial products of third parties is falwed. It is too late to take corrective action. The damage has already been done very severely. I reiterate my suggestion to create an institution/body under common control of SEBI,RBI,IFRA,PFRDA,NHB ETC. to sell multiple financial products and bring all intermediaries under it,s umbrella for regulation, remuneration, recruitment, licensing etc.
    DB DESAI · 6 years ago `
    The whole premise on which Banks, Auto dealers and other entities are allowed to sell financial products of third parties is falwed. It is too late to take corrective action. The damage has already been done very severely. I reiterate my suggestion to create an institution/body under common control of SEBI,RBI,IFRA,PFRDA,NHB ETC. to sell multiple financial products and bring all intermediaries under it,s umbrella for regulation, remuneration, recruitment, licensing etc.
    tdevendra · 6 years ago `
    it is an opener as SEBI/amfi/amcs should understand who is doing maximum mis-selling. sebi in connivance with amcs/amfi is closed its eyes for several reasons best defined by them. the precesdecor of sebi has allowed the practice more . the premier bank has atleast under stand that the role of sebi is misued and should not further allow the system to viatiate. the ifa fraternity from the beginning is working hard and helped the industry grow while adopting and toeing the amfi guidelines inspite various hurdles created from times . why hit the ifa fraternity below the belt by imposing so many restrictions , and impeding the logical theory of the present government of more employment as government is trying its best. the wrong among the ifa should be isolated, but encourage the good among them as they are helping build the nation as fulfilling the aspirations of small people also meeting their financial commitments/goals. its time the sebi acts as regulator not to dance to the tunes established amcs.
    Prashant · 6 years ago `
    Surprisingly RBI has realised now after all these years that banks are the biggest misselling hub. Now if they are worried about misselling by banks, are they going to disallow banks from selling them? The problem is banks are supposed to sell Saving/current accounts, fds/Rds, Loans but they are selling (misselling) everything apart from these products only to earn commissions at the cost of crores of us. Now all the regulators only help the companies to make more money at the cost of investors and then say they are worried about misselling...such a silly arguement.

    The above article clearly says that "The annual report shows that the Office of Banking Ombudsmans (OBO) handled over 1.36 lakh complaints of which 92% were disposed off within the year. Most complaints were related to unfair practices including third party sales of financial products."

    and also "These complaints include unsuitable sale of third party financial products, non-transparency and lack of adequate transparency in sale, non-disclosure of grievance redressal mechanism available and delay or refusal to facilitate after sales service by banks.

    The report also mentioned few instances of mis-selling relating to fixed deposits and insurance by banks."

    It is really silly that they are saying that top managements are ethical. We all know how ethical they are? E.g. Vijay mallya and others. Nothing can stop misselling till they are allowed to sell what they are not supposed to and by that what I mean is they do not expertise and ethics. These products require expertise and ethics.

    Also we after sale serve the client completely which banks never do. There are so many times we had to do KYC,FATCA and now aadhaar linking. Which bank does all that for their clients. They just missell and eat the commissions and then the investors have to run behind them then ombudsman and then courts. Also the commissions they earn are much higher than IFAs.

    There is only one way to stop misselling the financial products which is to disallow Banks, Brokers, Webaggregators and direct selling of any and all the products .

    Banks we all know why.
    Brokers and webaggregators only sell where they get highest commissions.
    Direct selling is any which ways malicious because the companies will be buyest and in the disguise of cost effectiveness their families suffer when they actually go to get the money from companies.

    In fact they should make it open for the insurance agents to sell any and all company's products whether Life or general insurance and all the other financial products. They should also scrap RIA regulation because it is a failure and it is malicious(because it only benefits companies at the cost of investors and every RIA has got distribution license in either a family person's name or under a disguise of different comany's ) as well.

    Shame shame shame
    AJAY SINGH · 6 years ago `
    It will be a great relief to account holders, who are fed up of bank employees giving forcefully unnecessary financial products, without knowing their needs. Worst case is giving endowment insurance or single premium term insurance for home loans.
    Gulshan · 6 years ago `
    Actually most of these people are fool. They want to learn cricket from stadium staff than Sachin Tendulkar
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