Complaints concerning financial institutions

If your complaint concerns a specific case (i.e. the conduct of a financial institution towards you directly or towards someone you represent), you should always contact the financial institution first. You should not contact the CNB before you have done so, or at the same time.

You may consider contacting the CNB, for example, when:

• you are not satisfied with the financial institution’s response, or
• the financial institution has not replied to your complaint within 30 days,

and you believe that the financial institution’s conduct in your case may be relevant to the CNB’s supervision of the financial market.

You may also contact the CNB directly if:

• a financial institution has breached legislation for which the Czech National Bank is responsible for supervising compliance,
• a financial institution has breached consumer rights,
• a financial institution has provided services without authorisation from the Czech National Bank,
• a financial institution has, for example, provided you with misleading information about products and services, charged you fees in breach of your contract, or promised you something it then failed to deliver.

For your complaint to be used as effectively as possible for the purposes of financial market supervision, it must be clear, easy to understand and, where appropriate, supported by relevant documentation. The CNB does not have access to all the information held by the financial institution concerning your case, and it is not the CNB’s role to deduce what the specific circumstances are.

From the CNB’s perspective, your complaint is relevant for supervisory purposes if it falls within the CNB’s remit, clearly explains what the complaint concerns (i.e. gives a description of the facts of the case, including a timeline, and a clear explanation of the shortcomings you see in the financial institution’s conduct) and identifies the institution involved.

You should address your complaint directly to the CNB. It is not appropriate to send it to both the CNB and the financial institution at the same time, or merely to copy the CNB into correspondence. In such cases, it is unclear what you expect from the financial institution and what you want the CNB to do.

If your complaint concerns a specific case (i.e. the conduct of a financial institution towards you directly or towards someone you represent), it must contain the following information in particular:

1. The name of the financial institution concerned
Accurately identify the bank, insurance company, non-bank lender or other supervised entity.

2. Your name and the nature of your relationship with the financial institution
For example:
“I have a mortgage with the bank”
“I have home insurance”
“I am a third party claiming under motor third-party liability insurance”

This information is necessary to identify the parties and the case. If possible, provide the exact name of the financial product as well.

3. A factual description of the case
Describe what happened in a clear and chronological manner.

A simple reference to documents or a general statement such as “see the attachments” is not enough. It is not the role nor within the capabilities of the CNB to deduce what the potential problem is from the documents provided. You should provide a clear and coherent description of the issue in your own words. Only then can your submission be treated as a complaint about the conduct of a financial institution and its relevance assessed from the perspective of supervisory competences and tools.

4. An explanation of what you don’t like about the financial institution’s conduct
Specify exactly what your complaint concerns, for example:
“The institution did not respond to my complaint”
“The institution did not provide me with adequate information”

You do not need to quote legal provisions or legislation – the CNB will assess any breach of legal obligations itself.

5. Relevant documentation
Attach copies of documents relevant to the case, in particular:

• contractual documentation,
• correspondence with the financial institution – both your correspondence and the financial institution’s replies, including complaints, claims and responses, as well as any reminders, statements and decisions.

In the area of insurance, do not submit technical or medical documentation such as photographs of damaged items, repair estimates, invoices, budgets, medical reports and technical or expert assessments. The CNB does not decide whether you are entitled to an insurance payout, nor does it determine how much you are entitled to. Consequently, it does not normally assess such documentation.

After assessing your complaint, the CNB may request any missing documents.

The deadline for settlement of a submission sent to the Czech National Bank is 30 days from the date of delivery. The Czech National Bank does not deal with anonymous submissions, repeated submissions and other non-standard submissions, e.g. those which have incomprehensible or confused content, contain vulgar expressions or are sent for information only.

The Czech National Bank receives several thousand complaints or other notifications from the public relating to the activities of financial institutions every year. The Czech National Bank evaluates each of them and uses the relevant ones in the conduct of financial market supervision.

The Czech National Bank is bound by a statutory confidentiality duty; therefore, it cannot provide you with specific information about the actions it takes in a specific case. Although transparency is important for the Czech National Bank, it cannot provide detailed information about the conduct of financial market supervision, for example on the commencement of an investigation or on the details of its communication with a financial institution.

Information contained in complaints from the public is analysed to provide indications of the activities of financial market institutions that could result in breach of the statutory duties supervised by the Czech National Bank. The Czech National Bank also performs investigations after receiving complaints from the public, during which it examines compliance of duties by the relevant institutions in the given market segment.

If it identifies shortcomings on the part of a financial institution, the Czech National Bank may impose remedial measures or fines, for example.

Not every complaint will lead to an investigation by the Czech National Bank.

You can find more information regarding the tasks and activities of the Czech National Bank relating to its supervision of financial market entities, including the relevant legislation, at https://www.cnb.cz/en/supervision-financial-market/

You can send your complaint by e-mail to podatelna@cnb.cz, by post to Senovážná 3, 115 03 Praha 1, or to our data box – ID: 8tgaiej.