20 million returned to savers – Corriere.it

Appeals presented decreased in 2022 to the Banking and Financial Arbitrator, the independent body supported by the Bank of Italy which allows an out-of-court settlement of disputes between customers and banks or other financial intermediaries. As emerges from the annual report presented yesterday, last year the number of appeals fell by 31% to just over 15,400 cases. As far as compensation is concerned, the Abf paid customers almost 20 million euros and of these over 17 million were returned directly by the intermediaries. Over 9 million have been returned to customers who were victims of fraudulent use of payment instruments.

Decreases the “quarrelsomeness”

According to the Deputy Director General of the Bank of Italy Paolo Angelini, the decrease is due to less litigation, a phenomenon to be viewed favorably. There has been an increase in complaints relating to payment services and instruments, while disputes on loans against salary-backed loans and on postal savings bonds decreased. According to the report, in 2022 the outcome of the appeals was in most cases substantially in favor of the customers. In 34% of the cases the Arbitrator agreed, in whole or in part, with the customers and in 18% the dispute was closed following an agreement reached between the parties.

The scourge of phishing

Disputes on payment services and instruments as a whole were the most frequently submitted to the ABF, with over 6,300 appeals, although they decreased in absolute value by 11 per cent. Disputes on salary-backed loans continued to represent the prevalent matter of the appeals received, with a share of around 23 per cent of the total, despite the fact that the dispute has more than halved compared to the previous year; disputes regarding postal savings bonds also decreased significantly (-36 percent compared to 2021). These trends reflect the dynamics of complaints presented by consumers, while the incidence of those brought by non-consumers remained equal to 5 per cent, according to the report. In 2022, the Arbitrator received 4,809 complaints regarding the fraudulent use of payment services and tools, down 13% compared to 2021. 42% of the frauds reported in 2022 concerned phishing, spoofing, smishing and vishing cases, in which scammers also use digital communication channels in a combined way to induce the victim to give up account access credentials and disposition credentials; of these, approximately 70% of the appeals concerned debit and credit cards. Among the remaining categories, the main reasons for the appeal were, in order of relevance, fraud relating to online payments (17%) and ATM transactions (15%).

Mortgage disputes

In the first months of 2023, the complaints on requests for renegotiation of variable rate mortgages, linked to the increase in interest rates, also indicated the Report of the Abf, the banking and financial arbitrator, on the complaints of customers of banks and finance companies. The issue of the difficulty of paying mortgage installments due to the effect of the rate increase – underlines Antonella Magliocco, head of the customer protection service of the Bank of Italy – which often affects young people – a dialogue has been opened with consumer associations to define lines of common action.

Response times (relatively) fast

Shorter times for appeals to the Banking and Financial Arbitrator. In 2022 they dropped, net of suspensions, to 120 days, well below the 180 required by law. As emerges from the annual report, the duration including suspensions was 140 days.