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Manila Bulletin devider Business devider Banking & Finance devider BSP consumer complaints jump 62% in 2024; mediation success rate improves

BSP consumer complaints jump 62% in 2024; mediation success rate improves

Published Jun 11, 2025 03:59 pm

At A Glance

  • Consumer complaints filed with the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas (BSP) surged by 62.3 percent in 2024 to nearly 70,000 cases, according to the central bank.
Consumer complaints filed with the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas (BSP) surged by 62.3 percent in 2024 to around 70,000 cases, according to officials of the central bank.
Of the total number of consumer complaints, 13 percent were categorized as unauthorized transactions, Charina B. De Vera-Yap, managing director of the BSP’s financial inclusion and consumer empowerment sub-sector, said during a press briefing on the Anti-Financial Account Scamming Act (AFASA) on Wednesday, June 11. 
Reports last year showed that the central bank processed over 43,000 complaints, which was also 95-percent higher than 2022’s over 22,000 cases.
These were recorded through various channels of the BSP’s consumer assistance mechanism (CAM).
“But those are the complaints elevated up to the BSP because the first level of recourse if ever you are making a complaint is your financial institution,” De Vera-Yap noted.
The number of cases elevated to the central bank for mediation more than doubled to 703 in 2024 from 322 in the previous year, and the success rate also improved to 83 percent in 2024 from 69 percent in 2023, according to Janice G. Ayson-Zales, director at the BSP’s consumer complaints resolution office.
About 41 percent of complaints were resolved in favor of the complainants.
As of May this year, the resolution office already handled 400 mediation cases, indicating a continued growth in the volume of such cases.
“With the passage of the AFASA, we are anticipating that complaints will go down because for example if the banks are able to implement the FMS, the fraud management system…in case there are behavioral anomalies, the bank will stop the transaction,” De Vera-Yap further said.
De Vera-Yap said figures on consumer complaints specific to AFASA could be available by the end of the year or in 2026.
Under the Financial Products and Services Consumer Protection Act (FCPA), BSP-supervised financial institutions are required to set up their own systems to handle consumer complaints and inquiries.

Related Tags

Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas (BSP) Anti-Financial Account Scamming Act (AFASA)
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