Every sixth complaint to Bank of Russia in 2022 H1 relates to sanctions

This is 36% more than in the same period in 2021. Such an increase was mainly due to the impact of sanctions on the activity of financial institutions. In total, over 33,000 ‘sanction’ complaints were received (16.7% of the overall number for six months) mainly against banks and brokers.

The number of complaints against credit institutions increased by almost 18% compared to 2021 H1. Over 19% of complaints against banks related to restrictive measures, including difficulties with currency transfers, the introduction of fees for managing foreign currency accounts, and problems with the withdrawal of foreign currency deposits. Excluding the sanctions, the number of complaints against banks in January—June reduced by almost 5%. In consumer lending, which is the largest category, the drop exceeded 21% due to both a decrease in demand for loans and measures taken earlier against the hard selling of additional services.

The multiple increase in complaints against securities market participants, which peaked in April, was caused primarily by forced transfers of accounts from brokers who were under sanctions to other market participants, as well as blocking of foreign shares in the European accounting infrastructure. The Bank of Russia took these complaints into account when preparing the concept of improving retail investors’ protection.

The number of complaints against microfinance organisations increased by 14.4% (the growth was driven by same-type mass complaints from several consumers), most significantly — regarding cyber fraud and credit histories issues (by 1.8 times). However, the number of complaints about the hard selling of additional services decreased.

The growing number of complaints against insurers (by over a third) is mainly linked to problems in the OSAGO segment. Namely, these are refusals to conclude contracts, including due to the lack of policies (five times more), and problems with issuing electronic policies (2.7 times more). To prevent car owners from failing to actually buy insurance, an OSAGO reinsurance pool was launched in April. It allows insurers to distribute the risks of highly unprofitable contracts among themselves without compromising the financial stability of companies.

The number of complaints about misselling soared (overall by a third) across almost all categories of financial products, except investment life insurance (-7%). An important measure to combat misselling is the Bank of Russia Ordinance, which took effect on 1 July 2022, according to which the clarifications of a bank employee about conditions and risks of a financial product should be strictly consistent with the information communicated to clients in writing.