Providing adequate and timely assistance and redress
BSP’S CONSUMER ASSISTANCE MECHANISM AS A PLATFORM FOR ASSISTANCE AS WELL AS A MECHANISM TO IDENTIFY EMERGING TRENDS IN BUSINESS PRACTICES AND CUSTOMER EXPERIENCE
While BSFIs are required to have their own mechanisms for complaints handling and redress, the BSP also provides a consumer assistance mechanism in which the public may seek redress for grievances against BSFIs for products offered or services rendered.
The BSP’s complaints handling process involves several layers of intervention which are sequential in nature with the intent to escalate the process and promptly arrive at a mutually acceptable outcome. While the consumer assistance mechanisms provides a platform for the public to seek redress, such consumer concerns and complaints are rich sources of information that could provide evidence-based regulatory, supervisory and financial education activities. Information can determine trends in business practices of banks, activities of particular institutions as well as a general assessment of customer sentiment.
As an example, data culled from complaints enabled the BSP to take a more pro-active and targeted role in addressing emerging concerns such as unfair collection practices (UCP) on credit card loans. Taking note of the recurring UCP concerns from the public, the BSP was at the forefront in pushing for the enactment of the Credit Card Industry Regulation Law (R.A. No. 10870) and the issuance of its corresponding implementing rules and regulations. By having a strong legal anchor for the regulation of credit card operations and through coordination efforts with other BSP supervision units and the BSFIs, UCP concerns have significantly declined from being one of the most frequent customer concern.
The BSP recognizes that pivotal internal and cross agency coordination mechanisms play a crucial role in financial consumer protection, hence, trends and issues are immediately flagged to relevant supervisory units.
THE CHATBOT
The BSP has several platforms where it can receive and entertain complaints. It can receive walk-in complainants, phone calls as well as receive complaints through electronic mail and postal mail. There are current efforts to further expand access to the BSP.
BSP ventures into regulatory technology or regtech, together with its partners, is currently developing a prototype chatbot as alternative channel for the public to elevate complaints to BSP and provide automated analytics of complaints data. Having a consumer assistance mechanism which uses artificial intelligence and machine learning will place BSP as one of the first central banks in the world to use such tool.
The chatbot, which uses artificial intelligence, will be a new, customercentric system that would provide two new channels (SMS and social media platform) for the public to lodge complaints against BSFIs. This will automate the responses to complainants, the processing of cases, and the storage and analytics of complaints data, thus, the vast potential to address pain points encountered by the BSP.
Ultimately, the BSP’s complaints resolution database will benefit from complete, consistent, and accurate information and improve the quality and timelines of financial consumer complaints handling.