TD Bank Group is the second big bank to opt out of the industry dispute resolution service, the Ombudsman for Banking Services and Investments.
TD announced Wednesday that, effective November 1, it will introduce a new independent dispute resolution process for TD’s Canadian personal and commercial banking customers.
TD has entered into an agreement with ADR Chambers Banking Ombuds Office to provide independent dispute resolution to banking customers who do not agree with the recommendations made by TD’s internal ombudsman.
The bank says that the move is expected to “significantly improve the average response time for banking customers’ concerns that remain unresolved after review by the TD Ombudsman”. It says that, for straightforward complaints, customers can expect a 50% reduction in response time from the previous process.
Back in 2008, Royal Bank also pulled out of OBSI and began sending its banking complaints to ADR Chambers. Its investment complaints are still handled by OBSI.
The move by TD comes at a time when the future of OBSI is up in the air. An independent review of the service, published last month, called for regulators to implement some fundamental reforms at OBSI, which has come under increasing criticism from the industry. The review found that criticism to be largely unwarranted, and called on regulators to adopt sweeping reforms to shore up the service’s credibility.