Following numerous complaints from customers as well as investigative agencies — that particulars in passbooks/bank statements are quite cryptic and generally inscrutable — the Reserve Bank of India on Tuesday said it will direct banks to provide essential minimum relevant details in respect of various transactions.

Despite extant RBI guidelines that mandate recoding of intelligible particulars in the statements, SS Mundra, Deputy Governor, underscored that the narration in the passbooks/bank statements at present is difficult to decipher.

“Of late, we have received numerous complaints not only from customers but also from the investigative agencies who find it extremely difficult to understand the transactions during the course of their investigations. RBI is in the process of reiterating its guidelines to banks to provide essential minimum relevant details in respect of various transactions in the passbook/statement,” said Mundra at the annual conference of the Banking Codes and Standards Board of India.

Further elaborating on customer service in the emerging regulatory/supervisory environment, the Deputy Governor said the safety of cheques put in the cheque drop boxes as also the quality of cheque leaves (enabling printing of fake cheque leaves), is a matter of concern for RBI.

Flagging customer service to senior citizens as another area of concern, he referred to the difficulties faced by pensioners in receiving updated pension, issuance of life certificates, verification of signature, need for periodic KYC etc.

“Several grievances have also been received from nominees of deceased customers while seeking settlement of death claims,” he said.

Mundra emphasised that documents to serve as an address proof for KYC compliance continues to remain a major irritant. This despite customers being permitted to submit a simple declaration about the current address which may be different from the originally submitted address proof.

The Deputy Governor called upon banks to ease the frustration of dealing with call centres and automated response systems.

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