A fifth of consumer complaints are related to ATMs or debit cards as the grudge against banking services rose sharply.

There were 3.08 lakh consumer complaints about banking services for the year to 30 June 2020, up 57%, according to the Reserve Bank of India.

Mobile or electronic banking ranked below ATM, accounting for 13.38% of consumer complaints against banking services. Non-observance of Fair Practices Code (FPC) was at third place, RBI said in its annual report on Ombudsman Schemes.

Complaints received regarding credit cards, failure to meet commitments, levy of charges without notice, loans and advances and non-adherence to the Banking Codes and Standards Board of India (BCSBI) norms increased this year as compared to the year-ago period.

The number of complaints pertaining to 'Direct Sales Agent (DSA) and recovery agents' increased from 629 complaints in 2018-19 to 1,406 this year, the report said.

The disposal rate declined marginally to 92.36% compared with 94.03% in 2018-19 as the surging complaints had to be handled by the same number of staff.

There was a 386% rise in the number of complaints received by the Ombudsman Scheme for Non-Banking Financial Companies (NBFCs) at 19,432 and the disposal rate stood at 95.34%.

The Ombudsman Scheme for Digital Transactions handled 2,481 complaints during the year. A maximum 43.89% related to non-adherence of RBI code for payment transactions.

Last week, RBI governor Shaktikanta Das announced a plan to integrate all the three offices (banks, NBFCs, digital payments) into a single ombudsman for the country.

While consumer complaints against private banks surged to 61.90%, in case of the State Bank of India (SBI) and nationalised banks the share decreased to 59.65%.

SBI had the largest share among lenders in the number of maintainable cases disposed at 48,333, followed by HDFC Bank at 15,004, ICICI Bank at 11,844 and Axis Bank at 10,457.

The turnaround time for complaints went up to 95 days from the 47 days in the year-ago period, and stood at 45 days for the January-June 2020 period, the report said.

The Chandigarh office led the table when it came to maintainable complaints in 2019-20 with 30,574 concerns as against under 21,000 complaints across two ombudsmen offices in Mumbai and about 29,000 in New Delhi.