Number of complaints continues to decrease: statistics for nine months
Between January and September 2023, the Bank of Russia received 186,700 complaints from financial consumers and investors, which is 8.9% less than in the first nine months last year.
The number of complaints declined primarily thanks to a drastic drop in the number of complaints related to sanctions, approximately eight times against the same period in 2022. There was a decline in the number of complaints filed by individuals against banks (-9.8%), including complaints related to consumer lending (-6.8%), with a more noticeable drop in the number of complaints concerning mortgage lending (-20.5%).
The number of complaints against insurers was down by 18.6%, excluding standard requests related to the incorrect application of the bonus-malus coefficient. These requests are prepared by intermediaries for a fee, but cannot be settled (for details, see the material on the Financial Culture website). The number of these requests decreased by 28.4% on the first quarter and by 8.8% — on the second quarter due to measures taken by the Bank of Russia, including clarifications for individuals.
The key factor behind the growing number of complaints against microfinance organisations (+15.2%) was still client requests to recalculate outstanding loan amounts, resulting from false information on the Internet (for details, see the material on the Financial Culture website).
Additionally, individuals started to complain about social engineering attacks more often. Also, there was a larger number of complaints about fraudsters attempting to take out loans in someone else’s name. The Bank of Russia expects that the adoption of the draft law on the self-ban on obtaining loans will help solve this problem.
The number of complaints against professional securities market participants dropped 4.2 times mainly due to those associated with sanctions, as well as other matters.
There was a considerable decrease in the number of applications related to misselling (-39.2%), including those concerning investment life insurance (-35.4%). This occurred amid large-scale control checks by the Bank of Russia.