In the Mexican financial system, banks are the institutions that receive the highest number of complaints from users, according to the industry’s consumer rights protection agency.
By April 2023, local banks had received some 55,750 complaints, according to the National Commission for the Defense of Financial Services Users (Condusef). This represents a 59% share of the financial system’s total. Insurance companies rank second, with 11,708 complaints (13% of the total), and the rest are contributed by credit information companies, multiple purpose financial companies, retirement fund administrators, and other service providers.
Regarding the highest volume of complaints during 2022, Condusef points to Banco Azteca as the banking institution with the highest number and percentage of complaints from users, followed by Banamex and BBVA.
Citibanamex was the bank that had the most fines imposed, and with the highest number of sanctions by Condusef, followed by BBVA, BanCoppel, HSBC and Santander.
Response index
In its Customer Service Performance Index (IDATU, in Spanish), Condusef assesses the type of responses that banks give to their customers. In 2022, the agency reported that 11 institutions, out of more than 40 with national coverage, obtained an IDATU of 10.
According to Condusef, the IDATU is an index that measures the quality of attention and service of the institutions with respect to their behavior and compliance with the complaints that their customers submit to the authority.
It is worth mentioning that, according to Ángel Iván Lozano, Career Director of the BA in Economics at Tecnológico de Monterrey, the institutions evaluated in the IDATU are those that registered a controversy or a complaint from users, as well as the response they gave, satisfactory or not.
According to Condusef, the IDATU index measures the quality of attention and service of institutions in terms of their behavior and compliance with clients’ complaints presented to the agency.
According to Ángel Iván Lozano, director of the economics degree course at the Tecnológico de Monterrey university, the banks evaluated with the IDATU index are those that received complaints from customers, and the banks’ response, satisfactory or not.
Methodology
Bloomberg Línea consulted the most recent data on complaints, claims and user service performance indices in the various Latin American countries featured in this special report. The editorial team also consulted various specialists who cover the financial industry in the region on the value that financial institutions place on the concept of customer service.
The data that Bloomberg Línea presents were provided by regulatory and consumer protection authorities to follow up on user responses, complaints and claims.
There is no standard that allows us to draw a common denominator due to several factors, such as the size of the markets, the priority that regulators and competition agents give to the matter and the demands of consumers themselves in the face of irregularities in the industry.