Less phishing, but doubling number of complaints about savings accounts
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The number of complaints at Ombudsfin, the Ombudsdienst for Financial Services, about Phishing fell by more than a quarter in 2024. But the Ombudsdienst did see a doubling of the number of complaints about savings accounts last year and the number of complaints about termination of customer relationships has increased by almost half.
Ombudsfin, the Ombudsdienst that assists consumers and entrepreneurs in disputes with banks, asset managers and other financial institutions, received 8,857 applications last year. That is an increase of almost 6 percent compared to 2023. Ombudsman Jean Cattaruzza says in the annual report today is also presented with some pride that the percentage of files that successfully broke up has risen from 70.2 percent in 2023 to 81.3 percent last year.
The ombudsman service continues to get complaints about fraud. There is good and bad news in that area. The good news is that the number of phishing files has fallen by 26.4 percent to 634. Phishing is the form of cyber crime in which criminals try to find out your credit card data or PINCODES, for example.
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But while the number of phishing files has fallen, there is an increase in the other forms of fraud, such as investment fraud (+30 percent) and other forms of fraud (+4 percent).
The financial ombudsman service also received almost half more (from 159 files in 2023 to 235 files in 2024) complaints about terminating the customer relationship. The number of complaints about savings accounts even doubled from 31 in 2023 to 64 in 2024. Customers have difficulty in the principle of the proportional transfer of the loyalty premium for the transfer of the credit of one savings account to another. « Given the complexity of the applied rules, we certainly understand this, » says the Ombudsdienst.
