Top 10 Banks Frequently Criticised for Customer Service in India, Based on Public Complaints and Reviews
Banking / Consumer Data Analysis
Top 10 Banks Frequently Criticised for Customer Service in India, Based on Public Complaints and Reviews
No regulator publishes a “worst banks” list. But complaint filings, disclosure reports and review platforms do leave a trail, and that trail says something more interesting than a ranking ever could.
- There is no official “Top 10 Worst Banks” ranking from the RBI, the Finance Ministry or any government authority. Any list circulating online, including this one, is a compilation of public sentiment and disclosure data, not a regulatory verdict.
- Complaints to the RBI Ombudsman rose to 13.34 lakh in FY 2024-25, up 13.55 percent from 11.75 lakh the previous year. Banks accounted for 81.53 percent of all grievances.
- Raw complaint counts track bank size, not bank quality. SBI logs the most complaints because it serves the most customers. Measured per branch in FY23, several private banks recorded a higher complaint density than SBI did.
- Loans and advances (29.25 percent) and credit cards (20.04 percent) drove the largest share of grievances in FY25, displacing the ATM and branch issues that dominated a decade ago.
- The ten banks below are the ones most frequently named in public complaint discussion. Read the context attached to each before drawing conclusions.
- Your practical takeaway sits in the escalation ladder near the end: an unresolved complaint becomes eligible for the RBI Ombudsman after 30 days, and the service is free.
Start With What Does Not Exist
Search for the worst banks in India and you will find dozens of confident listicles, most of them ranking institutions in a precise order with no stated methodology. It is worth saying plainly at the outset: the Reserve Bank of India does not publish a worst-banks league table, the Ministry of Finance does not publish one, and no consumer authority in India issues an official service-quality ranking of scheduled commercial banks. What does exist is considerably more useful, and considerably less dramatic. The RBI publishes an annual report on its Ombudsman Scheme with complaint volumes, categories and disposal rates. Listed banks publish self-reported complaint data in their Business Responsibility and Sustainability Reports. The RBI issues public supervisory orders when a bank’s systems fall short. Consumer review platforms carry tens of thousands of unverified but directionally informative customer accounts. Stitch those four sources together and you get a real picture, with real limits.
This article does that stitching. The list of ten banks below reflects the institutions that appear most often in public complaint discussion across review platforms, social media and news coverage. It is not ordered by severity, because the underlying data does not support ordering by severity. What follows each name is context: what the numbers actually show, what they cannot show, and where the fair criticism sits.
The National Picture: Complaints Are Rising Fast
Before looking at any individual bank, look at the system. The RBI’s Annual Report of the Ombudsman Scheme 2024-25 recorded 13,34,244 total complaints, a rise of 13.55 percent from 11,75,075 in FY 2023-24. Roughly 87 percent of those complaints came from individual retail customers, which tells you this is a consumer problem rather than a corporate banking one. Banks attracted 81.53 percent of all grievances received, with NBFCs a distant second. Within that, private sector banks accounted for 37.53 percent and public sector banks 34.80 percent of complaints reaching the Ombudsman offices, a split that undercuts the common assumption that public sector banks are uniquely bad at service.
Two years, one direction
Total complaints received under the Reserve Bank Integrated Ombudsman Scheme
Source: RBI Annual Report of the Ombudsman Scheme 2024-25, which uses these two figures for its own year-on-year comparison. Earlier years are reported on a different scope basis and are not plotted here to avoid a misleading trendline.
The growth is not evenly distributed across the system, and the way it splits reveals where the pressure actually sits. Complaints enter through two tiers: a centralised receipt and processing centre that handles first-line intake, and the 24 Ombudsman offices that formally adjudicate maintainable cases. Those two tiers moved at very different speeds this year.
The intake surge did not reach adjudication
Complaints received by tier, FY 2024-25
Source: RBI Annual Report of the Ombudsman Scheme 2024-25. The two tiers are reported separately and should not be added together, as intake channels overlap. The gap between 13.55 percent system growth and 0.82 percent adjudication growth suggests most of the rise is being absorbed at intake rather than escalating into formal cases.
Now look at who the complaints are actually against. The full entity breakdown settles a question that generates a lot of heat and very little light online, namely whether public sector banks are the problem.
Who complaints are filed against
Share of all Ombudsman complaints by entity type, FY 2024-25
- Private sector banks37.53%
- Public sector banks34.80%
- Other bank categories9.20%
- NBFCs14.80%
- Other regulated entities3.67%
Source: RBI Annual Report of the Ombudsman Scheme 2024-25 for the bank, private, public and NBFC figures. The 9.20 percent for other bank categories, covering small finance banks, payments banks, regional rural banks, foreign and co-operative banks, is derived by subtraction and reconciles the published shares to 100 percent exactly.
Private sector banks generate a larger share of Ombudsman complaints than public sector banks do. That single figure should retire the assumption that private banking automatically buys better service, and it is worth holding onto while reading the list of ten below.
One more figure deserves attention. The disposal rate slipped to 93 percent in FY25 from the previous year’s level, and the RBI has launched a two-month drive from January 1 to clear complaints pending beyond a month. RBI Governor Sanjay Malhotra used the December monetary policy meeting to flag rising pendency and to push regulated entities to improve customer service. When the regulator itself is publicly telling banks to do better, the criticism circulating on review platforms is not simply noise.
What people actually complain about
Share of Ombudsman complaints by category, FY 2024-25
Source: RBI Annual Report of the Ombudsman Scheme 2024-25. The remaining half covers deposit accounts, mobile and electronic banking, unauthorised transactions, pension payments, and non-observance of the Fair Practices Code.
The category shift matters. A decade ago, the complaint mix was dominated by ATM failures and debit card disputes. Today the centre of gravity has moved to credit products, which reflects how aggressively Indian banks have pushed unsecured lending and card issuance since 2022. Complaints follow growth. Where a bank is expanding fastest, its service infrastructure is usually stretched thinnest.
The Scale Trap: Why Complaint Counts Mislead
Here is the single most important thing to understand before reading any bank-wise complaint list, including this one. A bank with 50 crore customers will always generate more complaints than a bank with 50 lakh customers, even if the larger bank is meaningfully better at service. Absolute complaint volume is close to a proxy for market share. Publishing it as a quality ranking is a category error, and it is the error almost every “worst banks” listicle makes.
The correction is normalisation, and the RBI’s own historical data allows it. In FY 2022-23, RBL Bank recorded 6.52 complaints per branch, Kotak Mahindra Bank 3.82, IDFC First 3.71 and ICICI 2.87. SBI recorded 1.61 complaints per branch, the highest among public sector banks but still below several private lenders. As the same analysis noted, public and private banks differ in size, so a straight comparison is unfair, since a larger bank with more customers would attract proportionately more complaints.
Complaint density flips the story
Ombudsman complaints per branch, FY 2022-23. Lower is better.
Source: RBI Ombudsman data for FY 2022-23 as reported by ThePrint. Per-branch density is an imperfect measure too, since digital-first banks serve many customers through few branches. It is offered as a corrective to raw volume, not as a definitive quality score.
Notice that two banks in that chart, RBL and IDFC First, do not appear on the list of ten commonly criticised banks at all. Notice also that SBI, the bank most often named in public criticism, has the lowest density of the five. Public reputation and measured complaint density are not the same variable.
Self-Reported Complaint Data From the Banks Themselves
Listed banks disclose complaint numbers in their annual BRSR filings, and these are the figures behind most recent news coverage. SBI reported more than 6,87,000 complaints in FY25, with over 1,05,000 unresolved as of March 31, 2025, the largest category being unauthorised electronic transactions followed by delays in essential services such as loan sanctioning. Axis Bank reported 4,97,000 complaints relating to delays in essential services with 8,782 unresolved, plus 76,111 in an “other” category, 12,744 concerning advertising and 4,438 involving unfair trade practices. ICICI Bank reported 5,34,000 complaints in the essential services segment with 45,151 still pending. ICICI’s count rose sharply from 3,46,000 the previous year, and the bank attributed the increase to improved complaint reception mechanisms. HDFC Bank’s “other” category fell from 4,70,000 in FY24 to 4,42,000 in FY25, with 16,133 unresolved at year end.
Self-reported complaints, FY 2024-25
In lakh. Categories differ between banks and are not directly comparable.
Source: bank BRSR disclosures, FY 2024-25. Critical caveat: these are self-reported figures under differing internal definitions. SBI’s number is dominated by unauthorised transactions, Axis and ICICI report service-delay categories, HDFC reports an “other” bucket. A higher number can indicate better complaint capture rather than worse service, as ICICI explicitly stated.
That final caveat is not a technicality. A bank that makes complaining easy, logs every grievance and reports honestly will show a higher number than a bank that quietly discourages formal complaints at the branch counter. Counting complaints rewards opacity. Keep that in mind whenever you see a bank-wise complaint chart, including the one directly above.
There is a fairer question buried in the same disclosures, and almost nobody asks it. Not how many complaints a bank received, but what proportion of them it had failed to close by the end of the year. Receiving complaints is largely a function of size. Leaving them open is a function of how well the bank is staffed and organised to resolve them. Dividing each bank’s unresolved count by its own reported total produces the chart below.
Share of complaints still unresolved at year end
Derived from FY 2024-25 BRSR disclosures. Lower is better.
Calculated by this analysis from bank BRSR disclosures, FY 2024-25. Each ratio is internally consistent, since the unresolved count and the total come from the same disclosed category for that bank. Cross-bank comparison carries a real limitation: the underlying categories differ, so this measures each bank against its own reported caseload rather than against a common standard.
Read the two charts together and the ordering changes completely. Axis Bank reports the highest complaint volume among private lenders and the lowest unresolved share of the four. SBI reports the largest caseload and also leaves the largest proportion of it open. Neither chart alone is the answer, which is precisely the point.
Public sector banks at the Ombudsman
Complaints received, FY 2022-23. The most recent year with published bank-wise figures for these lenders.
Source: RBI Ombudsman data for FY 2022-23. Public sector banks together recorded over 1.02 lakh complaints that year against 73,764 for private sector banks, before adjusting for customer base. Punjab and Sind Bank is included as the floor of the range, not as a recommendation.
The Ten Banks Most Frequently Named, With Context
The following ten institutions appear most often in public complaint discussion across consumer review platforms, social media and press coverage. The order is not a severity ranking. Read the context column as the substance of the entry.
| Bank | What the public record actually shows | |
|---|---|---|
| 01 | State Bank of India | Highest absolute complaint count of any Indian bank, driven substantially by unauthorised electronic debit transactions. Also serves by far the largest customer base and the deepest rural network. Recorded the lowest per-branch complaint density among the five banks measured in FY23. |
| 02 | Axis Bank | Highest complaint count among private lenders in FY25 BRSR filings, concentrated in delays to essential services. Also disclosed complaints relating to advertising and unfair trade practices, categories where peer disclosures are thinner. |
| 03 | ICICI Bank | Complaint count rose sharply year on year, which the bank attributed to expanded complaint capture. Pending cases at year end were high relative to peers. Credit card and loan servicing dominate the public review trail. |
| 04 | Punjab National Bank | Consistently among the highest-complaint public sector banks in Ombudsman filings, second only to SBI in FY23. Criticism clusters around branch turnaround times, KYC re-verification and legacy core banking friction. |
| 05 | Canara Bank | Post-amalgamation systems integration features heavily in user reviews, alongside branch service speed and call centre reachability. No public evidence of outlier misconduct. |
| 06 | Bank of Baroda | Third-highest public sector complaint volume in FY23 Ombudsman data. Digital channel reliability and app-related grievances recur in review platforms. |
| 07 | Union Bank of India | Named frequently in branch-service and complaint-resolution-time discussions. Like Canara, carries merger integration overhead across a very large branch footprint. |
| 08 | Bank of India | Appears regularly in public complaint discussion around account servicing and turnaround times. Complaint volumes track its scale rather than indicating an outlier problem. |
| 09 | Kotak Mahindra Bank | The one entry with a documented regulatory finding. Recorded the second-highest per-branch complaint density in FY23 among banks measured. |
| 10 | Yes Bank | Carries reputational damage from its 2020 reconstruction and moratorium, when depositors faced withdrawal limits. Much of the criticism it attracts today is historical memory rather than current measured service failure. |
Compiled from RBI Ombudsman data, FY25 BRSR filings, RBI supervisory orders and public consumer review platforms. Review-platform sentiment is unverified and skews negative by design, since satisfied customers rarely post.
The Kotak case, and why it is different
Kotak Mahindra Bank is worth separating out because its entry rests on a public regulatory order rather than on aggregated sentiment. In April 2024 the RBI directed the bank to stop issuing fresh credit cards and barred onboarding of new customers through online and mobile channels, citing significant concerns from IT examinations for 2022 and 2023 and the bank’s continued failure to address them comprehensively and in a timely manner. The regulator identified deficiencies across IT inventory management, patch and change management, user access management, vendor risk management, data security and business continuity planning, and warned that without robust IT infrastructure, prolonged outages could seriously impair the bank’s ability to provide efficient customer service. The restrictions were lifted in February 2025 after the bank implemented remedial measures and commissioned an external audit with prior RBI approval, which the regulator found satisfactory.
That sequence is instructive in both directions. It confirms that the service concerns were real and independently verified. It also confirms they were remediated within ten months under regulatory supervision. A criticism that was accurate in mid-2024 is not automatically accurate in 2026, and a fair assessment has to account for the correction as well as the failure.
Common Issues Reported by Customers
Across review platforms and complaint filings, the recurring themes are consistent enough to be treated as structural rather than anecdotal.
- Slow customer support. Long IVR queues, difficulty reaching a human agent, and repeat explanation of the same issue to successive agents.
- Branch service delays. Understaffed counters, particularly at month end and in high-footfall urban branches.
- Complaint resolution time. Tickets closed without resolution, or reopened repeatedly. Pendency at year end is visible in bank disclosures.
- Transaction-related issues. Failed UPI and card transactions where the debit posts but the credit reversal lags, plus unauthorised electronic debits.
- KYC and account-related problems. Periodic re-KYC freezes applied without adequate notice, blocking access to funds.
- Charges customers did not expect. Minimum balance penalties, SMS alert fees, card annual fees and locker charges that customers report were not clearly disclosed at onboarding.
On that last point, a distinction worth making: the phrase “hidden charges” appears constantly in reviews, but most such charges are disclosed in the schedule of charges published on every bank’s website. The genuine failure is usually one of communication rather than concealment. A fee buried in a PDF that nobody reads is legally disclosed and practically hidden, which is a real problem, just not the same problem as fraud.
Where complaints originate
Ombudsman complaints by centre type, FY 2024-25
Source: RBI Annual Report of the Ombudsman Scheme 2024-25. Metro dominance likely reflects awareness of the grievance mechanism and digital access, not that rural service is better. Under-complaining is not the same as satisfaction.
Why Service Breaks Down: Three Structural Causes
Complaint data tells you what went wrong. It rarely tells you why. Three explanations account for most of what the numbers show. The first is growth outpacing capacity. Indian banks have expanded retail lending and card portfolios far faster than they have expanded servicing headcount, which is precisely why loans and cards now dominate the complaint mix. The second is merger integration. Several public sector banks on this list absorbed other institutions in the 2019 and 2020 amalgamations, and integrating core banking systems, customer records and branch cultures takes years, with customers absorbing the friction. The third is technology debt. The Kotak order made this explicit at one bank, but the underlying issue is sector-wide: legacy cores under modern transaction loads produce outages, and outages produce complaint spikes that have nothing to do with staff attitude.
None of these excuse poor service. They do explain why the same banks recur on these lists year after year, and why the fix is capital expenditure and hiring rather than a customer service training module.
What To Do If Your Complaint Is Not Resolved
This is the part of the article with genuine practical value, and it is the same regardless of which bank you use. India’s grievance system works, but only if you follow the sequence. Skipping a step is the most common reason complaints stall.
The escalation ladder
Each stage must be attempted before the next one accepts your case
Structure per the Reserve Bank Integrated Ombudsman Scheme, 2021. Stage 03 applies to banks required to maintain an Internal Ombudsman. Skipping stages is the most common reason a complaint is ruled not maintainable.
Step One
File formally and get a reference number
A phone call is not a complaint. Use the bank’s official complaint portal, email the customer care address, or file at the branch and insist on written acknowledgement. The ticket number is what starts the clock, and without it you have no case to escalate.
Step Two
Escalate to the Nodal Officer
Every bank publishes a grievance escalation matrix with a Principal Nodal Officer. This is a defined role, not a general helpline, and the officer is accountable for turnaround. Quote your original reference number.
Step Three
Approach the bank’s Internal Ombudsman
The RBI requires larger banks to maintain an Internal Ombudsman who independently reviews complaints the bank intends to reject fully or partially. Many customers never reach this stage because they do not know it exists.
Step Four
File with the RBI Ombudsman after 30 days
If the bank has not resolved your complaint within 30 days, or has rejected it unsatisfactorily, you can file free of charge under the Reserve Bank Integrated Ombudsman Scheme through the RBI’s Complaint Management System portal, by post, or via the toll-free contact centre on 14448. You do not need a lawyer and there is no filing fee.
Two things that materially improve your odds. Keep a dated paper trail of every interaction, including screenshots of app errors and copies of emails, because the Ombudsman decides on documented evidence rather than recollection. And file within one year of receiving the bank’s reply, or within one year and 30 days of your original complaint if the bank never replied, since complaints outside that window are not maintainable.
Choosing a Bank: What Actually Predicts Good Service
If you are picking a bank on the basis of this article, complaint counts are the wrong input. Ask instead about the things that correlate with day-to-day experience.
- Branch density where you live and work, not nationally. A bank that is excellent in Mumbai can be unreachable in a tier-three town.
- App stability, which you can assess from recent app store reviews filtered to the last three months rather than lifetime ratings.
- Published escalation matrix quality. A bank that publishes a clear, current Nodal Officer list with named contacts is signalling something about its grievance culture.
- Schedule of charges, read before opening the account. Minimum balance requirements vary enormously and are the single most common source of unexpected debits.
- Recent RBI supervisory actions, which are published openly on the RBI website and are the only genuinely independent quality signal available to a retail customer.
Frequently Asked Questions
Is there an official RBI list of the worst banks in India?
No. The RBI publishes complaint volumes, categories and disposal rates through its Ombudsman annual report, but it does not rank banks by service quality and has never issued a worst-banks list. Any ranking you encounter online is editorial compilation.
Does a high complaint count mean a bank is bad?
Not on its own. Complaint volume tracks customer base size closely. It also rises when a bank improves complaint capture, which ICICI Bank explicitly cited as the reason for its increase in FY25. Complaint density per branch or per customer is a fairer measure, and it reorders the list substantially.
Are public sector banks worse than private banks at customer service?
The FY25 Ombudsman data does not support that generalisation. Private sector banks accounted for a slightly larger share of complaints reaching Ombudsman offices than public sector banks. The two segments fail in different ways rather than at different rates.
How long should a bank take to resolve a complaint?
Banks are expected to respond within 30 days. After that window, or after an unsatisfactory rejection, your complaint becomes eligible for the RBI Ombudsman.
Does filing with the RBI Ombudsman cost anything?
No. The scheme is free for complainants and is designed to be used without legal representation.
Important disclaimer. This is not an official ranking. It is a compilation based on publicly available customer complaints, regulatory disclosures, bank self-reported filings, consumer reviews and news reports. Individual experiences vary considerably depending on the branch, the city, the product held and the specific circumstances of each case. Complaint volumes are strongly influenced by bank size and by how actively a bank captures grievances, and should not be read as a direct measure of service quality. Nothing here is financial advice or a recommendation to open or close an account with any institution. Figures cited reflect the most recent published data available at the time of writing and may since have been updated. Readers with an unresolved grievance should follow the escalation process outlined above and consult the RBI’s official Complaint Management System.
Sources and Methodology
All quantitative claims in this article are drawn from primary or directly reported secondary sources, listed below. Where a figure is self-reported by a bank rather than compiled by the regulator, that distinction is stated in the accompanying chart note. Qualitative characterisations of recurring complaint themes are drawn from public consumer review platforms and are described as sentiment rather than as verified fact throughout.
- Reserve Bank of India, Annual Report of the Ombudsman Scheme 2024-25, released December 2025, covering total complaints, entity-wise and category-wise splits, centre-wise distribution and disposal rates.
- Business Responsibility and Sustainability Report disclosures of SBI, ICICI Bank, Axis Bank and HDFC Bank for FY 2024-25, as reported in financial press coverage in August 2025.
- RBI Ombudsman bank-wise and per-branch complaint data for FY 2022-23, as analysed and reported by ThePrint.
- RBI press releases of April 24, 2024 and February 12, 2025 regarding business restrictions imposed on and subsequently lifted from Kotak Mahindra Bank Limited.
- Public statements by the RBI Governor on grievance redressal pendency, December 2025 monetary policy meeting.
