Banks will respond to customers quickly - Newspaper Kommersant No. 178 (7379) of 09/27/2022
The State Duma will consider a draft law halving the period during which financial market participants must provide a response to a client's complaint. Deputies and representatives of the Central Bank are confident that this will increase the responsibility of financial organizations when working with citizens' appeals. However, bankers and insurers stress that shortened response times to complaints will divert resources from more pressing issues.
Submitted to the State Duma bill, regulating clients' appeals to organizations in the financial market, according to which a response must be provided within 15 days (now - 30 days). The explanatory note states that the organization is required to provide a “reasonable answer”. The bill is addressed to banks, insurers, microfinance organizations, professional participants and a number of other organizations. “Modern technologies make it possible to quickly respond to citizens' appeals. 30 days is a period during which circumstances can change dramatically, and appeals sometimes require a quick response in order to make the right decisions, ”explains Anatoly Aksakov, one of the authors of the document, head of the State Duma committee on the financial market.
The Central Bank notes that the main idea is that citizens' complaints should first of all be sent for consideration to banks and other financial organizations. “If the client is not satisfied with the answer, he will be able to apply to the Bank of Russia, which, in turn, will control how the complaint was considered,” the regulator said. This will strengthen both the responsibility of the organizations themselves and control over the consideration of citizens' appeals. “It is more profitable for companies to solve the problem with the client themselves, to correct their mistake if it has been made, than to wait until the regulator does this with the application of appropriate supervisory measures,” the Bank of Russia is sure.
For the first half of 2022, the Central Bank received 198.5 thousand complaints from consumers of financial services and investors, which is 36.3% more than last year. Banks accounted for 50.9% of complaints, and non-credit financial institutions (NFIs) and participants in corporate relations accounted for 36.2% of complaints.
Human rights activists consider the initiative timely. “We see that the market is very reluctant to meet the consumer, waiting for instructions and clarifications from the regulator, government decrees, which is sometimes absurd,” says Yevgenia Lazareva, project coordinator of the ONF “For the Rights of Borrowers”.
Lawyers note that even the current norm of responding to complaints within 30 days applies only to government agencies. “The law “On the Procedure for Considering Appeals from Citizens of the Russian Federation” does not establish the procedure and terms for considering citizens’ appeals to banks, its effect also does not cover microfinance, clearing and insurance organizations, financial institutions, rating agencies, etc. GRM company Ksenia Khlopotova. According to her, the new bill proposes to unify the deadlines for responses. With the adoption of the document, "the Central Bank will receive additional levers of influence on financial organizations," suggests Ms. Khlopotova.
Representatives of the banking community are dissatisfied with the establishment of such a strict framework. As the head of the National Council of the Financial Market, Andrey Yemelin, explained, 15 days are "objectively short" to resolve a complaint in a multi-branch bank or a complaint requiring information about the client's settlements to be retrieved from the archive.
According to him, in order to comply with the requirements of the law, banks will have to speed up all work with complaints that “now is not the time at all, since there are many more important topics for consumers, for example, credit holidays.”
Insurers were not happy with the acceleration of consideration of complaints. According to Sergey Efremov, Vice-President of the ARIA, “the largest number of applications come from the settlement of losses; in order to consider the appeal, it is necessary to raise a payment file from the archive, the search and submission of which can take up to two weeks; after reading the materials, you need to get explanations from responsible employees, if necessary, conduct additional expert research, and prepare a response.
Only microfinanciers and collectors were not embarrassed by the ideas of the deputies. The SRO NAPCA supports the initiative as "a step towards reducing excessive regulatory burden." The SRO MIR claims that microfinance organizations “for the sixth year now, by virtue of basic standards, have responded to consumers within 12 days, so the bill will not affect the industry’s activities.”
