The Reserve Bank of India released the Annual Report of the Ombudsman Scheme for the period April 1, 2023 to March 31, 2024. The Annual Report covers the activities under the Reserve Bank – Integrated Ombudsman Scheme (RB-IOS), 2021 as well as major developments during the year in consumer education and protection and the way forward.
The major initiatives undertaken during the year in the consumer education and protection vertical are listed below:
- The Master Direction – Reserve Bank of India (Internal Ombudsman for Regulated Entities) Directions, 2023 was issued on December 29, 2023 to strengthen the Internal Ombudsman (IO) mechanism and harmonise the instructions applicable to various regulated entities. ii) Two additional CCs were established at Bhubaneswar and Kochi, in addition to upgradation of the existing CC at Chandigarh to accommodate the surge in call volume and to implement Business Continuity and Disaster Recovery capabilities.
- The Report of the Committee for Review of Customer Service Standards in RBI Regulated Entities, set-up by the Reserve Bank on May 23, 2022, was placed in the public domain on June 5, 2023 for comments from the stakeholders. Many of the recommendations of the Committee have been implemented while the other recommendations are at different stages of examination.
- An awareness booklet, ‘The Alert Family’ was released as a sequel to earlier booklets ‘BE(A) WARE’ in March 2022, and ‘Raju and the Forty Thieves’ in December 2022 to provide guidance to public while dealing with various banking services and facilities.
- The third edition of ‘Ombudsman Speak’ event was conducted on March 15, 2024 on the occasion of ‘World Consumer Rights Day’. RBI Ombudsmen across the country interacted with the local TV/Radio channels in their respective jurisdictions for spreading awareness, covering aspects related to grievance redress mechanism, safe digital banking practices and roles/ responsibilities of customers.
- The RBI Ombudsmen conducted 46 town-hall meetings and 203 awareness programmes across the country on avenues of grievance redress and consumer protection. The focus of the programmes was on specific target groups such as students, senior citizens, women, etc.
