The Banking Arbitrator has a makeover: more guarantees for customers

Ten years after its birth in 2009, the Financial Banking Arbitrator (Abf) has changed. The Bank of Italy is preparing to make a restyling of the body created to settle disputes between consumers and banks without going to court. The occasion is the alignment of the Italian legislation with the European Directive which governs the bodies for the out-of-court settlement of disputes, the so-called Adr (English acronym of alternative dispute resolution).

Currently the Abf is responsible for disputes between banks and customers qualified as consumers. The EU Directive has established some quality requirements, among which there is the obligation of a maximum duration of the procedure in 90 days from the moment in which the Abf has received the complete file of the appeal. A term which is already respected in substance today but which must be inserted, according to the document submitted for consultation by Bank of Italy, in the regulatory text of the procedure to make it consistent with the Directive.

On this occasion, a series of changes will also be introduced to improve the organization and streamline the procedure of the seven Colleges present in Italy.

The Abf is experiencing a real boom among bank customers-consumers: since the beginning of 2017 there have been 30.644 new appeals, the Bank of Italy recalls, with an increase of 42% compared to the previous year . Among the new proposals - the consultation has been launched and will last two months - the possibility for the presidents of the colleges to decide with their own monocratic provision, the invitation to conciliation to be addressed to the appellant and the bank, the establishment of the figure of the Vice-President .

The structure of the remuneration of members of the colleges has also changed, unchanged since 2009, with the novelty of the variable components linked to the productivity of the members of the colleges. The rapporteur who delivers the decision within twenty days of the Board meeting will receive a prize of 100 euros which will drop to 50 if the delivery arrives within the 20th day and to only XNUMX euros if the decision on the dispute arrives after a month.