To monitor banks’ customer service and handling of consumer complaints, the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) will soon undertake incognito visits to bank branches, stated a press release issued by the banking regulator on 16 February.
At the annual conference of the banking ombudsmen at Thiruvananthapuram, Raghuram Rajan, governor, RBI, said the grievance redressal mechanism must be integrated in the business operations of banks. He said grievances were also an important input into regulatory and supervisory processes and customers must have the right to access banking services and grievance redressal machinery—be it a bank’s internal mechanism or the banking ombudsman—so that they are not “excluded” from the banking fold, according to the release.
