How to complain about your bank

The Ombudsman cannot take a complaint that the bank has not had the opportunity to resolve. That makes the first written complaint the foundation of everything that follows, and it is worth spending twenty minutes on rather than five.

Put it in writing, through the bank's own grievance channel, and make sure it generates a reference or docket number. A phone call to a call centre is not a complaint for this purpose, because there is nothing to produce later. Email to the designated grievance address, or the bank's online complaint form, both work.

State the facts in order with dates, amounts and account references, then state precisely what you want — a reversal, a refund of a specific charge, a correction to a credit report, a written explanation. A complaint that describes an injustice without asking for a defined remedy is much harder to decide in your favour.

Attach the evidence at this stage rather than holding it back: statements, screenshots, the SMS trail, the sanction letter, the schedule of charges you were given. Everything downstream is decided on documents.

Note the date you complained. The thirty-day clock for the bank to respond runs from then, and it is the fact that opens the door to the Ombudsman.

Every large bank also has an Internal Ombudsman — an independent authority inside the bank to whom complaints the bank intends to reject must be referred before the rejection is communicated to you. You do not approach the Internal Ombudsman yourself; the point of knowing about it is that a flat rejection which shows no sign of that referral is itself worth raising.

If the bank's reply resolves the matter, you are done. If it is a form response that does not engage with what you asked, that is a satisfactory basis to escalate — 'unsatisfactory reply' is a ground in its own right, not just silence.

The scheme covers deficiency in service. That is a wide category and it includes most of what people actually complain about: unauthorised or disputed transactions, failure to credit or delayed credit, charges levied without disclosure, non-adherence to the bank's own published terms, failure to act on a mandate or instruction, unreasonable delay in closing an account or releasing security, mis-selling of a third-party product through the bank, and failures in complying with the fair practices and recovery agent rules.

It also reaches beyond banks. Non-banking financial companies are covered, which matters for loan servicing, recovery practices and interest computation disputes. Payment system participants are covered, which matters for wallets, prepaid instruments and payment failures. Credit information companies are covered, which is the route for a credit report that a bureau will not correct.

What it will not do is second-guess a commercial decision. Refusing a loan, setting an interest rate, declining to open an account, withdrawing a product, or deciding your risk profile are business judgements the Ombudsman does not sit in appeal over. Neither will it take a complaint that is already before a court, tribunal or arbitrator, or one that has already been decided by an Ombudsman, or one that is frivolous or without sufficient cause.

Framing matters enormously here. 'The bank wrongly refused my loan' is outside the scheme. 'The bank charged me a processing fee and then did not process the application, and has not refunded it despite a written request' is inside it. The underlying grievance may be the same; only one of them is a complaint the Ombudsman can decide.

Compensation is available for actual loss suffered as a direct consequence of the deficiency, and separately for mental agony and harassment, subject to limits set in the scheme. The limits are stated in the scheme document and have been revised, so check the current text rather than a figure you have read somewhere.

The Ombudsman's award is binding on the regulated entity once you accept it. It is not binding on you — you retain the right to go to a consumer commission or a court instead.

Confirm you are eligible to file: you complained in writing to the bank, and either thirty days have passed with no reply, or you received a reply you are not satisfied with, or the complaint was rejected. Confirm you are within one year of that reply or of when it should have arrived.

Gather the documents into a single set: your original complaint and its reference number, the bank's reply if any, statements and transaction records, and any correspondence. Keep it proportionate — a focused bundle is read; a hundred pages is skimmed.

File online through the Reserve Bank's complaint management system, which is the primary route and produces an immediate acknowledgement and a tracking number. Complaints can also be sent by post or email to the centralised receipt and processing centre, which exists so that a complainant does not have to work out which office has jurisdiction.

Complete the complaint form with the regulated entity's name, your account or reference details, a chronological account of the facts, the nature of the loss, and the relief you are seeking. Reuse the framing from your bank complaint so the two are consistent.

Submit and record the complaint number. Everything afterwards is tracked against it, and you can check status online.

Respond promptly to anything the Ombudsman's office asks for. Complaints are frequently closed for want of information, and the deadlines are real.

Engage with settlement if it is offered. Much of the scheme's work is conciliation, and the bank often concedes at this point. A settlement you accept ends the matter; if conciliation fails, the Ombudsman proceeds to a decision.

If an award is issued, you have a defined period to accept it in full and final settlement. Read what you are accepting — acceptance closes off other routes for the same grievance.

Money leaving your account without your authorisation is not an ordinary service complaint, and treating it as one wastes the window that matters most.

The Reserve Bank's directions on customer liability for unauthorised electronic banking transactions set out a limited liability framework that turns primarily on how quickly you report. Report promptly and, where the loss did not arise from your own negligence, your liability is nil or capped; delay, and your share of the loss rises with the number of days that pass. The framework is in the master directions and the relevant circulars, and the practical instruction that follows from it is simple: report immediately, in writing, and get an acknowledgement with a timestamp.

Notify the bank through its official channel, not only by phone, and follow up the same day in writing. The bank is required to credit the disputed amount back within a specified period while it investigates in cases falling within the limited liability framework — a shadow reversal — and it does not always volunteer this.

In parallel, if the transaction involved fraud, report on the national cybercrime reporting portal and the 1930 financial fraud helpline. The faster the reporting, the higher the chance of the funds being frozen before they are moved on. This is a separate track from the bank complaint and both should run.

Keep everything: the transaction alert SMS, the time you first called, the reference number, the email, the bank's responses. If it later goes to the Ombudsman, the timeline of your reporting is the decisive fact.

Do not accept 'you shared your OTP so nothing can be done' as a final answer without seeing it in writing with reasons. Whether a customer was negligent is a question of fact with consequences under the directions, and it is exactly the kind of determination the Ombudsman can review.

The integrated scheme also covers non-banking financial companies, which is the route for disputes about loan servicing, foreclosure charges, wrongly applied penal interest, harassment by recovery agents, and failure to release documents after a loan closes. The rules on outsourcing and recovery practices are enforceable and are a common ground of complaint.

Payment system participants — wallets, prepaid instrument issuers and payment operators — are covered too, which matters when a payment fails and neither the merchant nor the app takes responsibility. Failed transactions carry prescribed timelines for reversal and prescribed compensation for delay beyond them.

Credit information companies are also within scope, so a credit report entry that a bureau will not correct after you have raised a dispute with it is an Ombudsman complaint rather than a dead end.

Securities and mutual fund complaints are not. Those go to the market regulator's complaint system, and there is a separate online dispute resolution mechanism for market intermediaries that follows on from it. Insurance complaints go to the insurance regulator's grievance system and then to the insurance ombudsman, an entirely separate institution from the Reserve Bank's.

A complaint about the Reserve Bank itself, rather than about a regulated entity, has its own grievance channel and is not an Ombudsman matter.

Where a complaint spans two regulators — a bank that sold you an insurance policy, or an NBFC that sold you a market-linked product — file with the one that regulates the entity you dealt with, and say plainly in the complaint what the other product was. Mis-selling by a bank of a third-party product is squarely within the banking scheme.

Finally, the consumer commission route under consumer protection law runs in parallel to all of this. It is slower and more formal, but it can award compensation on a different basis, and nothing in the Ombudsman scheme takes that right away.