How to file an RBI Ombudsman complaint

The whole process, in the order you will meet it. Where a rule has cost me a complaint, the case is linked so you can see how it plays out.

What the Ombudsman is

The RBI Ombudsman is a free complaint service run by the Reserve Bank of India for customers of the entities it regulates. It works under the Reserve Bank – Integrated Ombudsman Scheme. The current version took effect on 1 July 2026 and replaced the 2021 Scheme; complaints filed before that date continue under the old one.

Three things about it shape everything else:

• It is a second step. It hears complaints only after the bank has had its chance.
• It is summary. There is no hearing and no cross-examination. An officer reads your complaint, the bank's reply and your response, and decides on paper. Every closure letter I have says the proceedings "shall be summary in nature and shall not be bound by any rules of evidence".
• It decides service failures. It asks whether the bank was deficient in the service it gave you. It does not second-guess the bank's business decisions.

It costs nothing, and you file it yourself. A complaint filed through an advocate is not maintainable, unless the advocate is the aggrieved customer.

Who you can complain against

The 2026 Scheme (clause 1) covers:

• Banks: all commercial banks, regional rural banks, state and central co-operative banks, scheduled urban co-operative banks, and non-scheduled urban co-operative banks with deposits of ₹50 crore or more.
• NBFCs that accept deposits, or that deal with customers and have assets of ₹100 crore or more. Housing finance companies and a few specialised categories are excluded.
• Non-bank prepaid payment instrument issuers, such as wallets.
• Credit information companies: TransUnion CIBIL, Experian, Equifax and CRIF High Mark.

You count as a customer if you use, or have applied for, a service of the entity. There is no upper limit on the amount in dispute.

It does not cover insurers, stock brokers, mutual funds, pension funds or merchants. If your real dispute is with a seller, the Ombudsman can look only at what the bank did in handling your card dispute, which is a much narrower question. See the laptop chargeback.

Step 1: complain to the bank, in writing

The Ombudsman needs proof that you complained to the entity first. Make that proof easy to produce.

• Use email, the bank's grievance web form, or a letter with acknowledgement. The Scheme accepts a complaint made "in writing or through any other mode" only where you can produce proof of it, and a phone call leaves you with nothing to attach.
• Find the grievance redressal page on the bank's website. It lists the escalation levels and the Principal Nodal Officer's email. Every regulated entity must publish these.
• State the facts with dates, what you want, and a deadline. Use the words "this is a formal complaint".
• Get a reference number. Save the acknowledgement.

You do not have to exhaust every internal level before going to the RBI. One written complaint and 30 days is enough. Escalating to the nodal officer in the meantime still helps, because a rejection from that level is a final reply you can file on immediately. Banks also have an Internal Ombudsman who reviews complaints the bank intends to reject; in one of my cases that reviewer doubled the compensation.

First complaint template →

Step 2: the 30-day wait, and the 90-day window

You can file with the Ombudsman when any one of these is true:

• the bank rejected your complaint, wholly or partly;
• the bank replied and you are not satisfied with the reply;
• 30 days have passed since the bank received your complaint and you have had no reply.

The 30 days becomes longer where the RBI, NPCI or a card network gives the bank more time for that kind of complaint, as with chargebacks and failed or unauthorised electronic transactions. The Scheme uses whichever period is higher (clause 10(1)(f)).

There is also an outer limit. Under clause 10(1)(g) of the 2026 Scheme the complaint must reach the Ombudsman within 90 days of the date that period expires, or of the bank's last communication, whichever is later. Under the 2021 Scheme it was one year. This is the biggest change for complainants. Separately, your complaint to the bank must itself have been made within the limitation period for such a claim.

Work out your dates →

Step 3: file on the CMS portal

File at cms.rbi.org.in. The portal validates as you go and tracks the complaint afterwards, which email and post do not.

1. Choose "File a complaint", verify your mobile number with the OTP.
2. Enter your details and pick the entity from the list. Search by the legal name: the card arm of a bank is often a separate entity, and TransUnion CIBIL appears as "Credit Information Bureau (India) Limited".
3. Give the date of your complaint to the entity and whether and when it replied. These dates must match your attachments.
4. Choose the category and sub-category. Choose the closest one; a slightly wrong category has never hurt me.
5. Declare that the matter is not pending in or decided by a court or another forum, and is not a repeat of an earlier Ombudsman complaint.
6. Write the facts and the relief you want. State the disputed amount and any compensation you seek.
7. Attach documents, review, submit, and save the acknowledgement PDF.

The other channels are email to crpc@rbi.org.in and post to the Centralised Receipt and Processing Centre, Reserve Bank of India, 4th Floor, Sector 17, Central Vista, Chandigarh 160017, using the complaint form in the Scheme. The contact centre on 14448 answers questions and gives status, but cannot take a complaint; its staff are available 8 am to 10 pm, Monday to Saturday.

How to write the complaint text

The officer has many files. Write so that yours can be understood in two minutes.

• Open with one sentence naming the failure: "The bank reported a credit enquiry in my name on 3 June 2026 without any application or consent from me."
• Then a dated timeline. One line per event, each tied to an attachment.
• Name the deficiency. What should the bank have done and did not? Delay, wrong information, no reply, failure to follow its own terms or an RBI direction.
• End with numbered relief. Correct the record. Confirm in writing. Refund ₹X. Pay compensation of ₹Y for delay and inconvenience.

Leave out adjectives, the history of your relationship with the bank, and proposals for how it should redesign its systems. A complaint that read like a set of suggestions was closed as "not a valid complaint".

Complaint text template →

What to attach

• Your written complaint to the bank, showing the date it was sent.
• The bank's acknowledgement and every reply.
• The document the complaint is about: the statement, the credit report page, the invoice, the alert email, the screenshot.
• Any service request numbers.
• Proof of loss if you are claiming an amount.

Combine them into one PDF in date order and number the pages, so your timeline can cite "p. 4". I lost a complaint about a credit report entry in which the closure noted that I had not supplied the credit report.

Step 4: after you file

You get an acknowledgement with a complaint number that looks like N202627016011871. From there:

1. Intake check. The Centralised Receipt and Processing Centre checks maintainability. Premature, duplicate and out-of-scope complaints end here, usually in 4 to 16 days.
2. Assignment. A maintainable complaint goes to an Ombudsman office. Allocation is not by where you live; mine have gone to several offices.
3. The bank is asked to respond within 15 days, with its documents (clause 14(2)). It can ask for more time. If it does not respond, the Ombudsman may proceed on your material alone, and can issue an advisory to the bank at any stage. In one case the bank missed the deadline, and that alone led to ₹50,000.
4. The bank often contacts you directly at this point with an offer. Answer in writing. If the fix is incomplete I either decline, or accept the payment expressly as partial and without prejudice to the complaint. I do not take phone calls as a resolution; I ask for it by email.
5. Keep answering the bank. Filing with the RBI does not pause the bank thread. I reply to every bank message so that its version is never the last word on record.

Track status on the CMS portal with your complaint number. Across my 39 closed complaints the median time was 28 days; complaints that were actually examined and fixed took a median of 32.

Step 5: answer the bank's reply

The office emails you the bank's response and asks for your comments, typically within two to five days. If you do not reply, the letter says, it will be presumed you have nothing to add. This is your one real chance to be heard, and I treat it as the most important step.

• Reply within the deadline, to the address in that email, quoting the complaint number and the case ID in the subject. Under clause 14(6), if you do not respond in time to a resolution the bank has offered on the Ombudsman's advisory, the complaint is closed as fully settled.
• Send your comments only as a reply to the RBI's email, when it asks. Unprompted emails to the intake address are answered with a standard note that it does not process correspondence.
• Keep it short. I started with long, legal-sounding drafts and moved to short plain lines. The short ones got better results.
• Start with your position. "I am not satisfied with the bank's reply. Please do not close this complaint."
• Number your points and keep each to one issue.
• Use the bank's own documents against it. My strongest rebuttals pointed out that two of the bank's documents contradicted each other, or that its account did not match its own emails.
• Concede what is true. If the bank fixed part of it, say so, then say what remains.
• Say what the reply does not answer. Banks often respond to a different question from the one asked.
• Restate the relief still outstanding.

If the bank replies again, you may get a second and third round. Answer each one.

Rebuttal template →

Step 6: closure

Every complaint ends with a closure letter naming a clause of the Scheme. The common endings are:

• Settled or resolved (2026 clauses 14(8)(a), (b), (e)): the bank fixed some or all of it after the Ombudsman stepped in. Most of my successful complaints end this way.
• Rejected, no deficiency (16(2)(a)): the Ombudsman looked and found the bank had not failed.
• Not maintainable (16(1) read with clause 10): the complaint was never examined on merits.
• Award (clause 15): a formal order directing the bank to act or pay. The Ombudsman passes one when the bank fails to file its response, or when the matter is not resolved by settlement and is not rejected. You must send the bank a letter accepting it in full and final settlement within 30 days, or it lapses. Awards are rare; none of my 40 complaints ended in one.

After closure the portal asks for feedback. I fill it in whenever I disagree with how a case was closed; it is the one place a disputed closure can be put on record.

Decode your closure clause →

Compensation

Under the 2026 Scheme the Ombudsman can award up to ₹30 lakh for consequential loss, and up to ₹3 lakh more for harassment, mental anguish and the complainant's time and expenses.

Those are ceilings. What I have actually received, across 9 cases, is between ₹1,000 and ₹50,000, ₹92,000 in total. Almost all of it was offered by the bank as "goodwill" once the Ombudsman was involved, or paid on an advisory from the office. Three patterns stand out:

• Ask for a specific amount. Where I did not, I usually got an apology.
• No financial loss often means no compensation. One closure said exactly that, although the Scheme defines a deficiency as a shortcoming "which may or may not result in financial loss or damage to the customer". Quote that definition when you claim for time and harassment.
• The bank's conduct during the complaint matters. Missing the Ombudsman's deadline, contradicting itself, or giving vague replies each produced a payment where the original problem alone might not have.

If compensation is mentioned in the closure letter and does not arrive, write to the bank with a short deadline and then file a fresh complaint quoting the original number. That worked for me in two days and again in sixteen.

Appeal and other routes

Under the 2026 Scheme an appeal is available only against an Award (clause 17). It goes to the Appellate Authority, the RBI Executive Director in charge of the Consumer Education and Protection Department, within 30 days of receiving the Award, extendable by up to 30 more for sufficient cause. A complaint that is settled, closed or rejected under clauses 14(8) or 16 cannot be appealed. Every one of my 39 closures says so.

So in practice, if you disagree with a closure:

• If something new has happened, file a new complaint about the new event. Example.
• If the closure misstates a fact, such as recording consent you did not give, write to the office that closed it and ask for the record to be corrected. Keep it short and factual.
• If the problem is how the office handled the case, an RTI reply told me that such grievances go to the Chief General Manager, Consumer Education and Protection Department. The same reply confirmed that no provision allows a closure to be reviewed. An RTI application to the RBI will also get you the internal note on your own case. What mine showed.
• The Ombudsman is not your last forum. The older closure letters say so directly: you may approach any other forum, court or legal authority. A consumer commission can hear the same dispute, provided you have not already taken it there first.

What changed on 1 July 2026

Sources: the text of the 2026 Scheme and the RBI's FAQ on it, and my own closure letters under both Schemes. Clause numbers refer to the 2026 Scheme unless stated.