Since 2016 and to date the Alternative Banking Dispute Resolution Centre (ABDRC) has established itself as a genuine solution for increasingly more Romanians. Over the past three years, more than 2,000 consumers have chosen not to go to court anymore to have their problems with the banks solved, but to search for a solutions through ABDRC.

• more than 2,000 applications over these three years
• more than 700 cases favorably resolved for consumers
• EUR 1.4 million obtained from negotiations for the benefit of consumers
• reduction of the time required for resolution of a casefile down to an average of 50 days
• reduction below 20% of the case rejection rate for some commercial banks
• increase to over 90% of the casefiles where the parties accept the solution of the ABDRC conciliators

Applications doubled year to year

While back in 2016 the center used to receive 235 applications from consumers, their number doubled in 2017 to 505 applications. Last year, consumers submitted close to 1,300 applications to ABDRC to have different aspects of their relations with banks or NBFIs addressed.

“The results obtained during these three years please us and give us confidence that both the consumers and the banks are increasingly more aware of the benefits of negotiating through a conciliator appointed by ABDRC. The trust Romanians place in the Center is visible also in the beginning of this year. ABDRC reported a 50% average increase in the weekly number of applications in the first two months of 2019. While last year we had in average 25 applications a week, now we have a weekly average of around 40 applications“, declared Alexandru Păunescu, member of the Steering Board of ABDRC.

EUR 1.4 million obtained from negotiations for the benefit of consumers

The fact that increasingly more Romanians welcome the amicable settlement is reflected also by the increase in the annual rate of casefiles concluded with resolutions (the parties reconciled, and accepted the solution proposed by the conciliator) v reports (one of the parties did not accept the solution).

Banks, increasingly more open to negotiation

The developments of the past years point to a significant reduction in the number of applications registered with ABDRC, but closed by the banks: from 60% in 2016 down, to 40% in 2018:

“We notice a trend that speaks for itself about the increasing interest shown by the bank in negotiating with consumers, both through the conciliators of ABDRC, as well as directly. We offer also this alternative that, as we can see, has encouraging results: so far, there have been 130 amicable settlements between the bank and the consumer, after the case was referred to ABDRC. For the running year, our general objective is to reduce the rate of applications rejected by the bank below 30%. I believe this is a workable objective, so much the more that we have already had banks the rejection rate of which ranges between 18% and 22%”, explained Alexandru Păunescu.

One and a half month: average time needed to resolve a casefile

The share of compliant applications has increased from 89% in 2016 up to more than 97% last year, a sign that increasingly more Romanians understand the ABDRC procedures, and their many benefits for consumers: the entire procedure is free of charge for them, and it takes not more than 90 days to have a casefile resolved.

Nevertheless, the average time needed to resolve a casefile has been reduced to 50 days, going down compared to 65 days in 2017 or 80 days in 2016.

Last year, more than one third of the casefiles were resolved in approximately two weeks.