India’s central bank received more customer complaints under its integrated grievance-redressal system in FY25, driven mainly by issues related to loans and credit cards, according to the Reserve Bank of India’s Ombudsman Scheme Annual Report released on Monday.
Complaints under the Reserve Bank-Integrated Ombudsman Scheme (RB-IOS) rose 13.55% to 13.34 lakh in 2024-25, compared with 11.75 lakh in the previous year. The RBI said 87% of all complaints came from individual customers.
The Centralised Receipt and Processing Centre (CRPC) received 9.11 lakh complaints during the year. Of these, 7.76 lakh were classified as non-maintainable - cases that fall outside the scheme’s scope - while 16,128 remained pending at the end of the financial year.
The Offices of the RBI Ombudsman (ORBIOs) handled 2.96 lakh complaints, up 0.82% from a year earlier. Despite the increase in volume, the number of complaints per lakh bank accounts declined to 7.7 from 8.9, indicating a marginal improvement in complaint intensity.
Loans and advances remained the largest category of grievances, followed by credit-card-related issues. Complaints related to mobile and electronic banking dropped 12.74% from the previous year.
Banks continued to account for the bulk of consumer complaints at 81.53%. Private-sector banks made up 37.53% of the total, while public-sector banks accounted for 34.80%. Complaints against non-banking finance companies (NBFCs) formed 14.80% of the total.
The RBI said it would continue efforts to strengthen grievance-redressal processes as digital and credit-led financial services expand across the country.
