Banks in Israel Required to Establish Ombudsman for Customer Complaints

All banking corporations in Israel must now establish an ombudsman position to handle consumer complaints, and to conform the ombudsman’s status, responsibility and functions to the satisfaction of the Banking Supervision Department of the Bank of Israel.

The directive, which took effect April 1, is intended “to ensure the banking corporations’ fair and efficient handling of complaints from their customers, and to maintain a high level of fairness in bank-customer relations,” the central bank said in a statement.

The directive also requires the banks to issue substantive response to complaints within 45 days, to establish mechanisms to derive lessons from ...