If you are already a bank customer, either a depositor or a borrower, or a prospective customer, you may want to check the lender’s code compliance rating relating to its commitment to customers and to micro and small enterprises.

According to the Code Compliance Rating of banks done by the Banking Codes and Standards Board of India (BCSBI) 2017, only one (unchanged from the previous survey conducted in 2015) out of 26 public sector banks and eight (nine in the previous survey) out of 17 private sector banks got ‘high’ rating for their adherence to code compliance.

IDBI Bank was the only public sector bank that got ‘high (H)’(85 and above score out of 100) rating in two successive surveys.

The eight private sector banks that got ‘high’ rating are — Axis Bank, DCB Bank, HDFC Bank, ICICI Bank, IndusInd Bank, Kotak Mahindra Bank, RBL Bank and YES Bank.

The three foreign banks — Citibank, HSBC and Standard Chartered Bank — that were surveyed got ‘high’ ranking.

The code compliance rating, which is based on five parameters — information dissemination, transparency, grievance redressal, customer-centricity, and customer feedback — may be considered an indicator of the level of implementation of important code provisions at the grassroot level of a bank.

A total of 51 banks (46 banks in 2015) were surveyed for code compliance in 2017. In the latest round, five urban co-operative banks were included. The survey is based on a sample size of 2.5 per cent of the branch network of 51 major banks.

While 12 banks got ‘high’ rating in the survey, 29 got ‘above average (AA)’ rating (70 to less than 85 score) and 10 got ‘average (A)’ rating (60 to less than 70 score). None of the banks surveyed fell in the ‘below average’ category.

The public sector banks, the ratings of which improved in the latest round, are: Central Bank of India, Corporation Bank, UCO Bank and Union Bank of India, with their rating going up to AA from A.

The public sector banks, the ratings of which came down a notch, are: Andhra Bank and Bank of Maharashtra (to A from AA).

In the private sector banks category, while DCB Bank’s rating improved to ‘H’ from ‘AA’, Dhanlaxmi Bank’s rating declined to ‘AA’ from ‘H’.

AC Mahajan, Chairman, BCSBI, said: “We have shared the findings of the survey with the RBI.”

He added that a revised code on commitment to customers and on commitment to micro and small enterprises is in the works and the same will be unveiled before January 2018.

BCSBI said a few important factors affecting customer service — quality, knowledge and attitude of staff, cost of services, response time and efficient delivery of services, and personalised handling of account, among others, are not captured in the survey. Hence, it may not strictly reflect the overall quality of customer service in a bank.

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