Another customer's record carrying my email since a 2015 bank merger

Bank · Savings account · wrong-email account consent

Complaint no.: N202627016016780
Against: Kotak Mahindra Bank
Filed: 31 Aug 2026
Closed: 14 Sep 2026
Time taken: 14 days
Scheme: RB-IOS 2026
Closure clause: 14(8)(b)
Did it help?: Partly helped
Compensation: None

What happened

I was receiving another customer's banking communications.

What I asked the Ombudsman for

Remove my email from the other customer's record, and say what of his had been sent to me and since when.

What the entity said

The bank found my email on a second customer's record, carried over when it absorbed another bank's data in 2015. It could not reach that customer, so it marked the email inactive on his record.

My reply to the entity's response

I objected in writing to closure: the bank's own reply showed the mix-up dated from 2015 and did not say what had been disclosed in eleven years.

Did the closure deal with it? No.

What the Ombudsman decided

The office phoned me on 14 September and then closed the case as resolved with the complainant's agreement.

Partly helped

Did the Ombudsman help?

Partly. The address was deactivated. The closure said the office had "not received any new aspects" from me and then relied on a phone call as my consent.

What I took from it

On that call I confirmed a fact, that the email had been marked inactive. The closure recorded that as consent to close. I wrote the same day asking for the record to be corrected. If you are called, say clearly whether or not you agree to closure, and follow up by email.

Related complaints

The bank's reply to me was addressed to the other customer (Kotak Mahindra Bank, 2026) Resolved

Summarised from the RBI closure letter and my own correspondence. Names of individuals, account numbers and reference numbers other than the complaint number have been removed.