Asian Journal of Research in Banking and Finance

Ombudsman is a person who is appointed to resolve the issues or conflicts between two parties outside the court. In India, banking ombudsman scheme was introduced by RBI in the year 1995 and later on revised in the years 2002, 2006, 2007 and 2009. It provides an expeditious and inexpensive solution to customers’ grievances related to non-payment of cheques, failure to issue drafts or pay orders, deposit accounts, ATM or debit/credit card related issues, etc. In this article, an attempt has been made to study the group wise, state wise and category wise distribution of grievances received by banking ombudsmen for a period of three years i.e. from 2011–12 to 2013–14. Moreover, an attempt has also been made to study the bank group wise categorization of complaints in order to draw some more meaningful conclusions. The significant increase has been observed in the no. of grievances received over a period of time on few issues. The study suggested a growing awareness among banking customers regarding the redressal of their grievances through banking ombudsman. Due to inclusion of more products and services under banking umbrella and increase in network base of banking industry, a need is also felt for expanding the network of ombudsman by opening up of more offices in other parts of the nation.