Reserve Bank to monitor banks on customer rights

Reserve Bank will shortly start monitoring banks on issues relating to customer rights in five broad areas, a senior official said today. The areas on which the regulator will be conducting surveys and supervision at various banks are - right to privacy, right to fair treatment & transparency, fair and honest dealing, right to suitability and right to grievance redress & compensation.

“RBI had asked the banks to have their board-approved plans in place by June 30. Now we at RBI will start monitoring and supervising the banks on issues relating to customer rights,” RBI Executive Director U S Paliwal said here.

He was talking to reporters on the sidelines of an event organised by Dun & Bradstreet, a company which is the world’s leading source of commercial information and insight on businesses.

“We have our own mechanism to see how banks are doing on the five fronts relating to customer rights and the monitoring will be done on those fronts,” he added.

RBI had put out a charter of customer rights in public domain sometime back, asking banks to implement it after their board’s approval.