Number of complaints to Bank of Russia up by 18% in 2022
In 2022, the Bank of Russia received 368,000 complaints* from financial consumers and investors. Complaints related to sanctions restrictions were the key driver of this growth. Of these, 72% complaints were received in the first six months of the year.
The majority of ‘sanctions’ complaints (27,600) were filed against credit institutions. Most often, they concerned the withdrawal and transfer of foreign currency, loan restructuring, and loan repayment holidays. Net of these issues, the number of complaints against banks would have decreased by 5.6%. The Bank of Russia’s conduct supervision of banks’ compliance with the law against the hard selling of fee-based services brought down the number of complaints related to consumer and mortgage lending by 20.6% and 10.7%, respectively.
The growing number of insurer-related complaints (by 30.2% to reach 59,300) was caused by the flow of one-type requests to change the bonus-malus coefficient, used to calculate the cost of OSAGO policies. Being generated by the websites of commercial intermediaries, these requests neither contained all necessary information nor were supposed to resolve applicants’ problems.
In the spring, the number of complaints about problems with OSAGO repairs increased by a third, in particular due to the lack of spare parts and delays in repairs. However, since the summer, the number of such complaints has returned to the 2021 level. Overall, in 2022, consumers complained less frequently about loss settlements under OSAGO policies, with the number of these complaints falling by 2.3%. The affordability of OSAGO policies was supported by the reinsurance pool launched in April 2022.
The number of complaints against microfinance organisations declined by 5.6% to 47,000 primarily due to a 30.6% drop in complaints about overdue debt recovery. At the same time, there were more complaints about fraud (by 38.6%), including scams where fraudsters attempted to take out loans in someone else’s name. To address this problem, a procedure was introduced to verify a borrower’s identity against certain parameters when issuing online micro-loans, and a self-restriction mechanism on new loans is being developed.
The multiple increase in complaints against securities market participants, which peaked in April, was caused primarily by forced transfers of brokerage and individual investment accounts from brokers who were under sanctions to other market participants, as well as blocking of foreign securities. This led to the adoption of a law to preserve the right to a tax refund for investors who opened new individual investment accounts but missed the standard deadline for closing old ones. Market participants are negotiating the unblocking of assets with European accounting institutions.
The increase in the number of complaints about misselling (by 40% to 5,800) was mainly due to improper sales of UIF units, products and services of trust managers, as well as earlier issued endowment life insurance policies. To stop unfair sales practices, the Bank of Russia introduced the rules to inform customers about the specifics and inherent risks of investment products, and also elaborated the procedure for suspending sales and refunding consumers when and where these rules are systemically violated.