THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: Expressing its helpless in dealing with many of the genuine complaints of the customers of PSU and private sector banks, the Banking Ombudsman for Kerala, Lakshadweep and Mahe, Uma Sankar said here on Wednesday that though it was for redressing the complaints of the common man, it cannot deal with policy issues like intervening in cases involving the handing over a chunk of SBT student loan non-performing assets (NPAs) to Anil Ambani’s Reliance Asset Reconstruction Company (R-ARC).
Speaking after releasing the annual report of the Banking Ombudsman at the Reserve Bank of India, she said the Ombudsman had no powers to question the commercial decisions of the banks. During the 2014-15 period Ombudsman’s office received 3,024 complaints as against 2,841 in the last year recording a growth of 6.4 per cent. Of the total 2,133 maintainable complaints 484 were resolved by mutual settlements. Though 76.9 percent of complaints were classified as rejected, majority of these complaints were actually settled fully or partially by the OBO.
Among them, the highest number of complaints were against SBT (763) followed by SBI (542 complaints. There were 201 complaints against Canara Bank and 197 against Federal Bank constituting 53.3 percent of the complaints. There were 124 complaints against institutions other than banks.
She said 32.2 percent of cases were from two districts, Thiruvananthapuuram and Ernakulam. Failure to meet commitments, non-observances of fair practices code and BCSBI Codes together constituted the largest category of complaints (929). OBO had received 327 complaints in respect of education loan, 268 in personal loan, 261 in home loan, 256 in agricultural loan and 113 in vehicle loan.