One Nation-One Ombudsman Scheme
Nodal Officers meet to discusses strengthening of Consumer grievance redressal mechanism
JAMMU : With a view to streamline the functioning and improve the effectiveness of the grievance-redressal mechanism under Reserve Bank – Integrated Ombudsman Scheme, 2021, a meeting of the Nodal Officers of the Regulated Entities such as banks, NBFCs and payment service operators, etc. was today organised by the Office of Ombudsman, RBI, Jammu here at Hotel Fortune Inn Riviera.
The programme was chaired by Ramesh Chand, Ombudsman, RBI Jammu.
In his address, the Ombudsman highlighted the customer centric features of recently launched Reserve Bank-Integrated Ombudsman Scheme-2021, which, he said, aims to further improve the grievance redress mechanism for resolving customer complaints against regulated entities by adopting ‘One Nation One Ombudsman’ approach and making the RBI Ombudsman mechanism jurisdiction neutral.
“The objective is to ensure that complaints of customers get addressed in the first instance at the local branch level and the regional level, and only be escalated when this option fails” he said.
He further highlighted the need for prompt, timely and comprehensive resolution of complaints. He emphasized that the fraud management systems of the banks should be robust enough to raise alerts in respect of transactions which do not match with the customer’s risk profile or previous transaction history. He also enunciated certain issues which required improvement in the banking system.
A PowerPoint presentation was made by Anil Kumar Reshi, Deputy Ombudsman highlighting the inflow of the complaints, grounds for complaints, redressal of grievances under various clauses of the scheme, major challenges faced by the Ombudsman Office in handling complaints, territory wise receipt of complaints, expectations from the Regulated Entities in ensuring quick and expeditious resolution of the consumer grievances, supply of information by the regulated entities, strengthening of internal grievance redressal mechanism within the regulated entities.
Later, specific issues related to the individual regulated entities were discussed and deliberated upon with focus on streamlining of the information flow and feedback session was held. The Nodal Officers of the Regulated Entities, thanked for the initiative taken by the Ombudsman Office in arranging this interaction.