The Bank of Mozambique (BoM) announced that in the first half of this year, national banking consumers submitted 979 complaints, more than half of which related to the country’s two largest banking institutions, both controlled by Portuguese banks and the only ones with more than one million customers.
According to the central bank’s report, of the total, Millennium bim accounted for 359 complaints and Banco Comercial de Investimentos (BCI), part of the Caixa Geral de Depósitos group, totalled 269 complaints. Meanwhile, in the list of banks with between 200,000 and one million customers, Absa Bank Moçambique totalled 58 complaints, Moza Banco 40 and Standard Bank 37.
According to the same document, 45 per cent of the total number of complaints submitted in the period from January to June were about the operation of ATM machines (namely money not being made available and debited from the account), 18 per cent were about credit operations and 15.3 per cent about bank accounts, with undue debits and blockages.
The Bank of Mozambique recently reported that complaints from banking system customers grew by 38.5 per cent in 2023, to 1120, culminating in the return of a total of 808 million meticals (12.5 million dollars) to consumers.
In its recent annual report for 2023, the financial institution said that from the complaints received and the inspections carried out ‘various irregularities were detected’, above all ‘in the collection of commissions and charges for financial products and services.’
‘In addition to issuing specific determinations and recommendations to ensure compliance with standards and duties of conduct by Credit Institutions and Financial Companies (ICSF), around 808 million meticals were recovered and returned to financial consumers,’ it said. Of this amount, 62.6 per cent (the equivalent of 506 million meticals) resulted from undue charges to economic agents contracting POS, and 33 per cent (264 million meticals) came from undue charging of commissions and charges for contracting and administering bank credit.
By the end of 2023, Mozambique had a total of 15 banks, 14 microbanks, four credit cooperatives, 13 savings and loan organisations and 2,304 microcredit operators, among other types.
