New Delhi: The Reserve Bank of India has asked banks to strengthen their systems to address recurring customer complaints and gaps in regulatory compliance. In a meeting held last month, the regulator asked banks to identify underlying systemic, process-related and operational issues contributing to complaints and undertake root-cause analysis of recurring complaints, said people familiar with the matter.

"The regulator reiterated some of the concerns and also shared major complaint categories based on complaints handled by RBI ombudsman offices," said an executive, requesting anonymity.

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"The regulator has called for identifying and implementing appropriate measures to bring down recurrence of such complaints," he added. More than 1.33 million complaints were received in fiscal 2025 under the RBI's ombudsman scheme, a 13.55% increase from the previous year.

"Another suggestion was to build capacities, including industry-level training programmes, for effective handling and resolution of such complaints," said another executive. "We will be discussing this internally and finding a mechanism including capacity building at the industry level, besides each bank board will formulate their own strategies as per the RBI overall directives," he added.

At the annual conference of the internal ombudsmen of banks and other RBI-regulated entities and in July, central bank deputy governor Swaminathan J noted that a significant proportion of complaints resolved in favour of customers at the RBI ombudsman level were not referred to the internal ombudsman in the first place.

"This is a matter of serious concern because it undermines the very purpose of the internal ombudsman framework," he said, requesting regulated entities to review their internal grievance redress processes carefully and asking their IOs to identify recurring issues and help implement remedial measures.

Complaint management systems should be designed to prevent complaints from inadvertently bypassing the internal ombudsman process due to classification issues or process deficiencies, he said.

The Reserve Bank - Integrated Ombudsman Scheme, 2026 (RB-IOS, 2026), came into effect in July 2026, under which jurisdiction-neutral handling of complaints under the "One Nation One Ombudsman" approach was put into place.