Banks To Share Information About Customer Complaints

Banks will begin sharing information about customer complaints in an industry-wide “dashboard” that is available from today.

Access to the online resource will be via the website of the Banking Ombudsman Scheme, which is co-ordinating the initiative on behalf of its members.

Banking Ombudsman Nicola Sladden said the dashboard would provide for the first time an overview of the nature and extent of complaints and how banks responded.

“Until now, the scheme has been the only source of information about complaints, but our information has been incomplete because we deal with only complaints banks have been unable to resolve themselves.”

The sector’s dispute resolution scheme received 722 complaints in the second quarter of this year. By comparison, the dashboard shows banks received 21,468 during the same period.

The dashboard breaks down complaints by product and service type (such as credit cards, investments, insurance and processing methods) and the underlying problem (such as transaction error, faulty advice or information and unwarranted or excessive fees). It also shows how long each type of complaint took to resolve and what the outcome was. Complainants are profiled by age, gender, location and whether an individual, business or trust.

Ms Sladden said the interactive dashboard would be updated quarterly to show trends and cumulative totals. Data on complaints about individual banks would begin appearing by February 2021.

She said banks backed the initiative because they recognised that gathering industry-wide information would provide a wealth of insights into how to improve customer outcomes.

“It’s a fact of life that when you deal with hundreds of thousands of customers and process millions of transactions each day, things will sometimes go wrong. The vital thing is to identify, correct and learn from these mistakes. The dashboard will help greatly with that effort.

“The other benefit is that it will enable customers to see how their bank’s complaints and complaints-handling record compares with that of rivals.”

Ms Sladden said she had been heartened by the way banks got in behind the initiative, which also had the backing of the New Zealand Bankers’ Association, the Financial Markets Authority and the Reserve Bank of New Zealand.

“How banks respond to and learn from complaints says a lot about culture and conduct. We expect the increased transparency provided by the dashboard will lead to better customer outcomes,” Reserve Bank Governor Adrian Orr says.

Rob Everett, FMA Chief Executive said “We’re pleased to see the Banking Ombudsman launch this customer complaints dashboard. This shines a light on customer concerns and how banks are addressing them. These are important ingredients for ensuring customers are treated fairly.”

The dashboard can be found here.

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