The Banking Ombudsman put R25 735 594.17 back into consumers’ pockets after resolving 8 008 complaints against banks. The complaints, from last year, were about current accounts, personal loans, savings accounts, credit cards and home loans.reported increased by 12% to 8 521and premature complaints increased by 11% to 13 373, with the total record number of cases opened totalling 21 641, an increase on the 2022 figures of 11%.
A vulnerable consumer is defined as “someone who, due to their personal circumstances, is especially susceptible to detriment, particularly when a firm is not acting with appropriate levels of care”. The top five sub-categories of vulnerable consumers in 2023 were people older than 65, as well as consumers experiencing life events such as retrenchment and the death of a life partner or spouse.
“The relatively low number of complaints received indicates the South African banking sector’s commitment to transparency, regulatory compliance and customer satisfaction. Various factors such as the size of the bank’s customer base, play a significant role. Larger banks naturally manage more transactions and interact with a broader spectrum of clients, which can result in a higher volume of complaints, simply due to their scale,” she says.