Dashboard provides overview of the nature and extent of complaints and how banks have responded
The Banking Ombudsman Scheme has launched an industry-wide dashboard to allow banks to share information about customer complaints.
The Banking Ombudsman Scheme, which coordinates the initiative on behalf of its members, launched the online dashboard to provide an overview of the nature and extent of customer feedback and how banks address complaints.
“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,” said Banking Ombudsman Nicola Sladden.
Rob Everett, the chief executive of the Financial Markets Authority (FMA), commented: “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.”
Read more: Reserve Bank welcomes new assistant governor
The new dashboard categorises complaints by product, service, and underlying problems. It also shows how long it took for banks to process complaints and their solutions to resolve them. Meanwhile, complainants are profiled by age, gender, location, and whether they are an individual, business, or trust.
The dashboard can be accessed through the website of the Banking Ombudsman Scheme and will be updated quarterly to identify trends and cumulative totals.
“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,” Sladden said. “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.”
Reserve Bank of New Zealand (RBNZ) Governor Adrian Orr added: “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.”
