A report from the Banking Adjudicator this week raising concern about the service levels of banks has been "noted" by the banking industry.
Bob Tucker, the chief executive of the Banking Council, says a report of this kind is disconcerting because the banks say they are trying hard to provide good service. Tucker says the council has taken note of the report and will raise the issue of service levels with the banks.
One in six people surveyed have complained about their bank over the past year and Neville Melville, the Banking Adjudicator, is concerned about the level of service provided by South African banks.
The second annual survey, conducted by independent research company Markinor, to evaluate how the country's four major banking groups respond to customer complaints, reveals that the two primary causes of complaint are mistakes and poor communication by banks.
Melville is adamant that service levels could be dramatically improved if every bank adopted the approach that the customer comes first and treated each account-holder as an individual.
Many of the complaints referred to the office of the Banking Adjudicator could have been avoided, if the banks' staff had given clients the correct explanation and support in the first place.
Melville says that while the banking sector's client service standards have improved in leaps and bounds over the past few years, it is troubling to see so many clients still reporting dissatisfaction.
He says service levels can be improved through staff training, implementing best practices and consumer marketing initiatives that increase awareness of the complaint-handling mechanisms available.
The adjudicator's office is committed to publishing regular information notices for the industry, highlighting recurring problems and suggesting feasible solutions.
Of equal concern to the adjudicator is that only one in five people surveyed were aware of the existence of the Code of Banking Practice. "The four large banks aren't doing enough to educate clients about their rights in terms of the code," Melville says.
Tucker says the banks have done "quite a lot" to promote the code. All banks have signs in their banking halls informing clients about the code and their right of recourse to the Banking Adjudicator.
But banks will have to do more and they know it, Tucker says.
The adjudicator's annual award which recognises the bank that demonstrates excellence in complaint handling and client recovery, went to Absa in 2002.
- Nedbank, Cape of Good Hope Bank and Permanent Bank account-holders were shocked this week to discover that transactions on their debit and credit cards had been debited twice. About 100 000 transactions amounting to millions of rands were duplicated. About four percent of account-holders were affected.
Colin Wheater, the head of communications at Nedbank's technology and operations division, says such mistakes rarely happen and the banks sincerely regret the error.
He has assured account-holders that the extra debit has already been reversed and clients will not be charged additional interest.
On Tuesday human error caused a batch of transactions to be inadvertently processed for a second time.
By Thursday morning all the duplicate transactions had been reversed. Wheater says the banks are investigating whether there was any negligence on the part of the person who made the mistake and are conducting checks to ensure that all accounts have been corrected.
- To contact Neville Melville, the Banking Adjudicator, phone (011) 838 0035, fax (011) 838 0043, email: