The number of Romanians who resolved their disputes with financial and banking institutions via the Alternative Banking Dispute Resolution Centre (ABDRC) increased by more than 12 times in the first six months of the year, up to 188, which shows an increasing high interest of consumers in ABDRC.

In fact, the level of awareness of the services provided by ABDRC, particularly among the consumers in the country, has been steadily increasing in the last six months, driven by the Roadshows ABDRC organized in the major cities of the country. Thus, while last year the applications received from Bucharest-Ilfov accounted for more than 52%, this year this percentage dropped to 34% as more and more applications where received from other counties, such as Prahova, Iași, Brașov, or Constanța.

“Even from the end of the last year we have started to see an increasingly high interest of Romanians in having their disputes with banks and NBFIs resolved amicably, via ABDRC. This growing trend has maintained also this year, and we expect it to continue also in the second half of the year, both in Bucharest, as well as across the country. I believe that ABDRC plays an important part in defusing the tension between consumers and banks or NBFIs, and this is seen in the increasingly high number of casefiles”, declared Alexandru Păunescu, member in the Steering Board of ABDRC.

In the first six months of the year, ABDRC received 544 compliant conciliation applications, that is 3.5 times more than the same period of last year. Of these, 279 turned into casefiles, that is 7 times more than in 2017.

Email was the method of choice for submitting compliant applications in the first six months (82.5% of the applications). The rest were either mailed (8.82%) or submitted directly to the office of ABDRC (8.6%).

Top counties with most applications:

• Bucharest-Ilfov: 190 applications
• Prahova: 27 applications
• Iași 23 applications
• Brașov 17 applications
• Constanța 17 applications
• Bacău 16 applications