Jakarta (ANTARA News) - Bank Indonesia (central bank) has asked banking industry to apply a good strategy and increase their response in handling customers` complaints.

"Banks should not merely abide by the legal aspect of their services but they should also heed the importance of improving their services to customers," BI Deputy Governor Muliaman D Hadad said here on Wednesday.

He said that banks should use customers complaints as an investment for increasing their credibility and improving their image.

"Complaints by customers should serve as an investment. Banks should not consider it only as costs," he said.

Therefore, Muliaman said that banks should have standard of serving customers` complaints, such as a special unit for handling the complaints, the time need to response to the complaints and the deadline for the completion of the complaint handling.

After banks take complaints as an investment, they then should provide education for their customers in order to reduce mistakes with regard to the banking services.

Up to the end of April 2011, reports by customers concerning banking services reached 1,160 with biggest complaints or 40 percent on the payment system.

On the occasion, Muliawan also said that banking credits had up to early in June grown by 23.5 percent from that in the same period in the previous year`s growth.

"Demand for banking credits will remain strong until the end of the week. This is indicated in the year-to-date credit growth which reached Rp123 trillion, or 7 percent. It reached Rp358 trillion or 23.5 percent year on year basis," he said here on Wednesday.

He said that the credit growth was still dominated by investment credits which were recorded at 10 percent year-to-date, followed by consumption credits which accounted for 7.5 percent.

Muliaman said that even though there were banks which still performed below the banking business target (RBB), yet demand for credits were predicted to remain strong until the end of the year.(*)

A014/HAJM

Editor: Jafar M Sidik
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