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  • The Banking Supervision Department is authorized to clarify the public’s complaints in all areas of banking corporation—bank and credit card company—activity. This function is integrated with other tools used by the Banking Supervision Department to promote fairness and transparency in bank–customer relations.

  • In 2013, the Banking Supervision Department handled 5,067 written enquiries and complaints, of which 1,549 were complaints related to a specific dispute between the customer and the bank, and 3,518 were requests to receive information on consumer rights, questions regarding Banking Supervision policy and various clarifications. In addition, the Department responded to 21,450 telephone enquiries.

  • In 2013, 22.2 percent of the complaints against banking corporations on which a position was taken by the Banking Supervision Department were found to be justified, similar to the proportion last year. The proportions in both years were lower than the proportion of justified complaints in the past.

  • The complaints handled in 2013 dealt primarily with means of payment (33 percent of complaints) and current accounts (24 percent of complaints).

  • Segmentation of the justified complaints by the factor in the failure indicates that the main reason for them was human error.

  • Due to the involvement of the Banking Supervision Department, the banking corporations paid their customers a total of about NIS 5.3 million, of which NIS 1.5 million were related to specific complaints, and the remainder were due to broad processes which were carried out based on information which arose from handling complaints.

  • The Banking Supervision Department rates the quality of banks’ dealing with their customers, as reflected in the enquiries and complaints with which it deals. In 2013, four banks were given an identical “good” rating by Banking Supervision (Leumi, Discount, Mizrahi-Tefahot, First International), and one bank was rated lower (Hapoalim)—“adequate”.



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