Complaints we can consider

We can give you:

• information about banking industry practices and procedures
• information about how to make a complaint about a bank
• information about banks' legal obligations and industry codes.

Outside our scope

Our goal is to help bank customers with their complaints. But there are some complaints we cannot look at. Our rules, or terms of reference, explain this in detail. In brief, we cannot consider:

• complaints about a bank's commercial judgement
• complaints about a bank's interest rate policies or the size of its standard fees and charges
• complaints involving claims of direct financial loss above $500,000 (complainants can, however, agree to limit their claim to $500,000)
• complaints about matters that happened a long time ago
• complaints better dealt with by another agency (for example, the Commerce Commission, Financial Markets Authority, Privacy Commission or Human Rights Commission)
• complaints about financial service providers which are not members of our scheme (complaints about such providers will be referred to the relevant scheme: Insurance and Financial Services Ombudsman, Financial Services Complaints Ltd or Financial Dispute Resolution Service)
• complaints already resolved with your bank.

We cannot give you:

• advice about a particular bank's products or services
• financial, legal or budgeting advice.