Ombudsman won $3.9M from banks, investment companies

Canada's banking ombudsman won compensation in 20 per cent of the bank cases it handled in 2010 and in 38 per cent of the investment cases, its annual report says.

Overall, the Ombudsman for Banking Services and Investments helped consumers get back almost $3.8 million from banks and investment companies. Most of the money, $3.3 million, was from investment companies.

TD Bank was far and away the target of the most complaints. Of the 464 banking files the ombudsman opened in 2010, 171were related toTD, the report said.

A TD spokeswoman said the number of complaintsreflects the fact the bank has the biggest retail customer base of the Canadian banks, andthat thefinancial institutionactively encourages customers to take their issues to OBSI if complaints are not resolved internally.

Participation in the complaints program is voluntary. Among the big five Canadian banks,Royal Bank is only one that does not participate.

The 464 banking case filesOBSI openedin 2010 was up from 391 in 2009. Mortgages were the source of the most complaints, with 117 files. Fees and rates, followed by service issues and errors accounted for more than 60 per cent of the files.

The ombudsman gets many inquiries that do not result in a file. For example, in 2010 CIBC was the subject of 624 inquiries, but only 56 files were opened.

During 2010, the number of investment case files opened by OBSI fell to 562 from 599.

The combined bank and investment files opened rose 3.4 in 2010 from 2009.

OBSI, which isindustry-funded but independent, handles complaints abouteverything from debit and credit cards to stocks and mutual funds.