In 2023 the Consumer Rights Protection Centre (PTAC) received 277 complaints from consumers about various financial services, which is 25.9% more when compared to a year prior, as mentioned in the report published by PTAC.
The number of complaints about insurance services is up 95.8% and the number of complaints about lending services is up 59.2%. At the same time, the number of complaints received about debt collection remained the same last year.
In 89 applications submitted to PTAC detailed out-of-court debt recovery services last year. Complaints mainly concerned excessive penalties, justifications of debt, non-compliance with regulations regarding duties of notification, as well as aggressive commercial practices, PTAC reports.
PTAC also received 80 complaints concerning 33 businesses and their services in the non-banking lending sectors. This is 42.9% of the total number of complaints and an increase of 94.1% in the number of businesses.
PTAC reports that the biggest problems consumers had to deal with last year concerned remote termination of contracts, inappropriate insolvency evaluation,
restriction of total cost of credits, registration of loans to third parties, as well as provision of misleading information.
At the same time, there was a 24.1% increase in the number of complaints received by PTAC concerning credit institution, reaching 72 cases. The centre notes that consumers complain about misleading information and advertising, failure to provide information, failure to assess solvency, drawing up credits for third parties, as well as opening and closing accounts. Complaints have also been received regarding scammers’ access to accounts, failure to warn in time, failure to open a basic account.
Most often, consumers complained at the same time about both the actions of the service provider and the actions of the debt collector, to whom the service provider transferred the recovery of the consumer’s debts. In turn, complaints in which consumers question the assessment of their solvency before issuing loans or indicate that they have fallen victim to telephone scams may include both consumer lenders and credit providers in the banking sector at the same time.
In most cases, consumers were provided with an explanation of their rights, but in 30 cases, PTAC reached a positive solution for the consumer when dealing with complaints. Thus, a positive result for consumers was achieved last year in almost 11% of all complaints or applications submitted by consumers, which is two more positive solutions than in 2022, when there were 28, according to PTAC.
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