The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) on Monday released the Annual Report of the “Ombudsman Schemes of the Reserve Bank for the year 2019-20”. The Banking Ombudsman Scheme (BOS) was first notified by the Reserve Bank in 1995 under Section 35 A of the Banking Regulation Act, 1949. It is administered by the Reserve Bank through 22 Offices of Banking Ombudsman (OBOs) covering all states and union territories. The Annual Report covers the activities under the Banking Ombudsman Scheme (BOS), the Ombudsman Scheme for Non-Banking Financial Companies (OSNBFC) and the Ombudsman Scheme for Digital Transactions (OSDT); the developments in the area of consumer protection and the way forward.
The grievance redress machinery of the Reserve Bank functioned with round-the-clock availability, leveraging on the capabilities of the state-of-the-art Complaint Management System (CMS). The CMS platform, which was launched in June 2019, brought all stakeholders namely the Reserve Bank, the Regulated Entities (REs) and their customers on one web-based platform; and digitalised the entire process of handling of customer grievances by the Reserve Bank.