The Reserve Bank of India has revised the Banking Ombudsman Scheme. Now complaints relating to credit card, deficiencies in providing the promised services even by banks' sales agents, levy of service charges without prior notice to the customer and non adherence to the Fair practices code as adopted by individual banks can be filed. This is in addition to the provisons already existing in relation to delay in rendering services etc. The new scheme covers virtually every aspect of Banking. The scheme is applicable to all commercial banks, regional rural banks and scheduled primary cooperative banks having business in India, and is effective from 1st January 2006.

The revised Banking Ombudsman Scheme will be fully staffed and funded by the Reserve Bank instead of the banks as earlier. Under the new Scheme the complaints can also be filed online.

Awards given by the Banking Ombudsman are appellable before the Reserve Bank of India.

The first Banking Ombudsman Scheme was introudced in 1995 and was revised in 2002 mainly to cover Regional Rural Banks and to permit review of the Banking Ombudsmens. The new Scheme is an imporvement over the earlier schemes. The Banking Ombudsmen currently have their offices in 15 centres.

BankDRT has listed the applicable provisions for the scheme. The old scheme has been retained for academic research scholars.