Officials of the banking and insurance sectors are today assuring the public that consumer protection in the financial services sector is not an issue they take lightly. As testament to this stance, they have pledged their willingness to support all meaningful and well-intended initiatives by the Office of the Financial Services Ombudsman (OFSO) that curb anti-consumer practices that might exist in their respective industries, and help heighten and retain consumer confidence in the delivery of quality services in T&T's financial sector. David Evans, president of the Bankers Association of T&T (BATT), and Richard Camacho, president of the Association of T&T Insurance Companies (ATTIC), gave the commitment in response a calls by Central Bank Governor Ewart Williams for new legislative powers for the OFSO to better equip the agency to protect consumers against reported questionable practices of local financial institutions. The governor was addressing executives across the financial landscape at last Friday's annual breakfast meeting hosted by the OFSO at the Central Bank Plaza, St Vincent Street, Port-of-Spain, Williams expressed the view that revamping the OFSO using the formal statutory framework was the logical step to strengthening the OFSO.
He said legislation would give this office a much broader reach, along with sanctions to promote compliance. Financial legislation would also treat with complaints and concerns raised by the public dealing with everything from service charges, disparities in the lending and borrowing rates, as well as the pricing of variable rate mortgages. Evans said the Bankers Association wants to work with the governor and the ombudsman to widen that net of consumer complaints in the banking sector. He said although banks conducted their own customer surveys, BATT welcomed the OFSO as an independent source of information. "When I looked at the ombudsman's report, the bankers only had 15 complaints (in 2010), while the insurance companies had 241. "With 7,000 employees and hundreds of branches throughout the country, it's foolish of us to think that the number of complaints that we have is just 15.
"Obviously, we would like to think we are in an industry where (we are) striving for perfection and there are no complaints, but, obviously, I think we have to take cognisance of the fact that there's much anticipation out there in the public than the 15 complaints that shows up on a report," he said. Evans added: "The governor wants to widen the net in terms of the amount of complaints that reaches the office of the ombudsman. I will like to work with the governor and the ombudsman in that respect to make sure that we widen that net because it's in our interest to trap all these complaints that supposedly come in."
Meanwhile, Camacho said the insurance sector had an ugly image in the eyes of consumer, but through the OFSO, the motor side of industry, at least, had received a facelift.
The ATTIC head said complaints against insurance companies fell from close to 400 in 2006 to 250 in 2010, not just because of the work of the ombudsman's office, but because a number of insurance companies-not enough, however,-had set up internal mechanisms to ensure staff compliance within the governance structures towards improving and increasing consumer satisfaction. Camacho said the public now needed to be made aware of internal mechanisms within companies and use it as a first step before inundating the ombudsman with complaints. "Companies are starting to treat with it (complaints) as independent internal alternative dispute mechanisms. I think that needs to be encouraged, both in the banking and insurance sectors, and taken to a whole new level. It is only where people feel they are not getting satisfaction they ought to then come to the ombudsman's office," Camacho said. Camacho said ATTIC had entered into discussions with the T&T Chamber of Industry and its Commerce Dispute Resolution Centre. The purpose of this, he said, was to educate the public about a third alternative if a matter in question went beyond the expertise of the ombudsman office rather than seek legal recourse.
Camacho said: "If people come here (to the OFSO) for redress, realise that the quantum is beyond the office's mandate, then the office and or the licensee, as a preferred course of action, can refer people to this alternative dispute resolution mechanism. "I think it has worked well. There has been a trial run where the courts referred a number of cases (to it) in an effort to monitor and see how well it works and it worked particularly well. So if the bankers have not yet addressed it, I would urge you all to look at it."
The ATTIC president said the Financial Institution Act made provisions for an alternative dispute resolution mechanism and that the new Insurance Act would contain the similar amendments. "I think it would be fair to say that in spite of what has transpired in the financial sector in the last two years with one or two companies, by and large, through education through the ombudsman's office, (and) through the Financial Literacy Programme that we are all partners in, an awareness of the realities of the financial landscape, the realities of what it is people are engaging in when they enter into contracts with insurance companies and the banks, I think we started to see a new appreciation of everyone's responsibilities, starting with self and then going through the institutions," he said. Camacho lauded Governor Williams and Financial Services Ombudsman Suzanne Roach, saying that ATTIC would support undertakings by the OFSO that go to the heart of customer satisfaction, consumer knowledge and confidence.