Bank customers get $39 million in payouts
Bank customers have received nearly $39 million in compensation since the Banking Ombudsman scheme began operating 25 years ago.
But the scheme nearly got pulled at the beginning after two banks threatened to withdraw their membership.
Despite being originally set up by the New Zealand Bankers Association, current ombudsman Nicola Sladden says some of the members found it hard to cope with the early decisions.
“They struggled to get past their indignation at being held to account,”
Fortunately, she says, today the banks have a far more supportive attitude.
In the first year the service handled 348 complaints. That has now grown to over 3000 cases a year.
Over 78,000 people have made complaints since it started.
Types of complaints have also changed dramatically.
Back in 1992 cheques and passbooks were the main areas of concern but along with technological change the service has seen a rise in complaints about online payment issues.
In recent years there has also been an increase in complaints around online scams and fraud.
Sladden said those cases could be particularly sad and there were often two victims — both the banking customer and the bank.
Solving the dispute came down to working out who was going to wear the loss.
“It is scary stuff. It could happen to any one of us.”
That was why it was important for the banks and customers to be Has helped 78,000 people Can award a maximum of $200k per person in compensation scam savvy.
Sladden, who is the fourth Ombudsman for the scheme and has been in the role for two years, says complaints relating to property are also a common theme.
Last year it had a run on people complaining about fees when they tried to break the term of their fixed mortgage to switch to a lower rate.
It has also had complaints relating to changes in payment processing times with the banks moving to real time banking.
From the banking side she has seen a slight increase in banks exiting customers — the official term for when a bank says they will close down a person’s accounts and no longer provide them with a service. This can be because of threatening and abusive behaviour towards bank staff. Then there are the quirky cases — she remembers one where a woman complained that she had banked $1000 through an ATM but only $660 of it went into her account. The bank said its machine had very comprehensive systems in place to count money and claimed the woman must have banked less than what she said. In the end the ATM maintenance guy turned out to be the hero when he found the money jammed in the machine in a routine checkup. Sladden was also once offered a slab of venison by a Gisborne man who was grateful for the scheme’s help after a run in with his bank. She politely declined.